The Oracle THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015 I VOL. 52 NO. 118
Inside this Issue
In cutting back on financial aid, Congress betrays students. Page 6
Montage
S PORTS USF men’s tennis peaking as Sweet 16 nears. BACK
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
What in the world is the QEP?
USF rolls out Global Citizens Project to prepare students for global society.
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By Grace Hoyte N E W S
E D I T O R
Phrases like “global citizenship,” “student success” and “quality enhancement” are often thrown around boardrooms when discussing the future of education. However, this kind of jargon isn’t exactly relatable for students who are the target of such talk. USF’s new Global Citizens Project was unveiled as this year’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). The plan was revealed near the end of the university’s reaffirmation of accreditation process, and is supposed to be just that: a plan for enhancing the quality of the university for students. “Whatever you do as an individual, wherever you live, has an impact that can be felt,” said Karla Davis-Salazar, associate dean of Undergraduate Studies. “We really want students to understand those connections.” The QEP, which has a budget of $5 million, is scheduled to pan out over eight years, with several new opportunities for students. A QEP is a required component of the reaffirmation of a university. It is designed to ensure that universities are focusing on enhancing student learning, though schools are allowed to choose in what way that enhancement will take place. Every university gets to decide what it believes to be an essential enhancement that will take place on campus. Davis-Salazar said USF chose the Global Citizens Project because it is invested in students becoming global citizens, per the university’s strategic plan. “It’s about creating a plan; and that’s what we did,” Davis-Salazar said. “We selected the Global Citizens Project … and this is obviously something we think is very important for our students to have the knowledge of a global citizen. So we have developed a five year
plan focused on this.” The executive summary of the QEP describes a “global citizen” as one who is globally aware, globally responsible, and in global participation. With the global nature of today’s society, Davis-Salazar said global citizenship is required for students to be able to navigate the interconnected world we live in, and they need to be able to communicate effectively with others who are different. That, she said, is the point of the project. “Essentially, we have three strategies — three areas that we’re focusing on to provide students with these opportunities,” she said. “One is the creation of the Global Citizen Awards.” The award is a two-tiered award program that offers students a number of rewards for beginning their journeys toward becoming global citizens. The first level is the Global Citizen Award and the upper level is the Global Citizen Scholar Award. Davis-Salazar said students would earn these awards through activities such as studying foreign languages, studying abroad, community service and globally engaged undergrad research. Additionally, students with these awards will be eligible to apply for an additional study abroad scholarship. When a student completes the lower level, they become eligible for the upper level, which is similar but more intensive. The award is still in development, but will be put into place in the fall, and there will be no limit to the number of students who can receive the award. The second strategy to making students global citizens is certifying select courses as “global FKLs.” “Here we want to provide students with the introduction to this idea of being global,” Davis-Salazar said. “We’ll do that through (FKL courses) by ‘globalizing’ as many of the courses in our general education curriculum.” These will be courses already required at USF, but they will include “more global content, including Global Citizens assignments,” according to the university’s website. That way, she said, no matter
what FKLs students take, they’ll be getting an introduction to the notion of global citizenship. FKL Capstone and Writing Intensive courses are also going to get a global makeover. These courses will include the same themes and kinds of global content as other FKLs, but will be “more advanced,” and count toward the Global Citizen Award requirements. The final strategy in implementing the Global Citizens Project involves degree programs. “(We will be) inviting departments to globalize their majors (and) their degree programs,” DavisSalazar said. “Here, we really want departments and faculty to think
about the courses that they require for their major and the other kinds of experiences that they have as part of the students’ development and understanding of that particular discipline.” These changes may include revising the required courses for the major, as well as study abroad and undergraduate research, she said. Many of the changes implemented in the degree programs will enable students to fulfill certain requirements of the Global Citizen Award. In this way, the project aims to award students for becoming global citizens. Come next year, Davis-Salazar n See QEP on PAGE 2
By Tiana Aument
Instagram this week. The picture is of Teaf and teammates, Nik Alfonso and Andres Leal, with Nick and his 9-year-old brother, Scotty. Nick lost his battle with brain cancer on Mother’s Day. He was 11 years old. “He was our friend, our teammate, and our brother,” read Teaf’s post on Instagram. “He did so much more for us than we could
Baseball team mourns loss of honorary captain
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“Words can’t describe how much of an impact this little guy has had on not only myself, but the rest of the USF Baseball team and USF family,” wrote senior Kyle Teaf, who has known Nick Wolf since the USF baseball team adopted him as honorary team captain, in a caption for a picture posted on
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Studying abroad broadens global perspective By Grace Hoyte N E W S
E D I T O R
Whether it’s sitting on the beach in Costa Rica and studying for an exam, or sipping tea with friends in England during a break from class, the university’s study abroad office offers hundreds of study abroad opportunities each year. Though USF World offers many of these programs on the Education Abroad website, students can study internationally in a variety of capacities. “Study abroad, I like to think, is many parts,” said Jim Pulos, associate director of Education Abroad. “The big delineations would be study abroad — faculty-led group programs — and then exchange models, where they can go back and forth. We deal in connecting students with service learning work, with internships abroad, and volunteer work abroad, and even help advise students on how they might work abroad.” But Study Abroad is more than taking classes in another country and having fun, especially at USF. With dozens of programs running all year round including some at sea, USF has a faculty-led program for just about every major. Lia Fleming, a junior majoring in health sciences, studied abroad the summer following her freshman year and said it was an amazing experience. “I was trying to find something to do in college, something to get involved with,” she said. “I walked past the study abroad fair and just looked around, got some brochures and talked to an adviser. And by the time I made it back to the dorm, I decided I really wanted to do this.” She described the decision as part impulse and part sense. As an out-of-state student, she would have struggled to find housing near campus to fulfill her summer course requirement. Additionally, tuition for the classes abroad was competitive with in-state rates. Fleming is just one of many students on campus who have studied abroad. According to the Education Abroad website, 1,405 students, representing 19.81 percent of the students at USF, have also done so in the last year. Fleming attended USF’s most popular program, USF in Florence, which takes students to Italy for the
summer. “During the weekends, we tended to travel around a lot,” she said. “We had classes Tuesdays and Thursdays — and Wednesdays, sometimes — so you really have Friday to Monday to travel around.” USF direct programs, which are faculty led, offer courses in the target country, though language proficiency is not always required. For instance, Fleming did not speak Italian when she went abroad. However, some programs encourage beginner-level proficiency, and others offer courses in the target country’s language. “We went … on a guided tour, these five little towns on the Italian coastline, connected by a subway and hiking trails,” Fleming said. “The subway was on a train strike — the workers — so the train stopped moving, stopped coming, so we were stranded in this one town because one of the trails was closed. I guess one of the trains ended up coming, but I was stuck in a little restaurant trying to get lunch, and me and a couple of friends got left behind. “We finally caught another train, but we were no longer on a guided tour, we were by ourselves. So, we got to the next town, and the way to get to the final town was to hike. We picked a trail, but we didn’t pick the right one. I mean, as many things went wrong that day, it was probably one of the best experiences I had.” Pulos said it is this kind of learning, cultural and social, that students get in spades while studying abroad. “The learning takes place as much outside of the classroom as it does inside the classroom,” he said. “And that’s something that with an open mind and an open spirit, students will say ‘I learned so much in the classroom, … but I learned a huge amount just by living in this new environment and this new nation that became my home.’” Pulos said the kinds of experiences students get from study abroad are priceless, especially since many employers and graduate schools consider students more highly when they have studied abroad. “The student who graduates with an internationalized education, and this can be ... anything they can quantify on their transcript, … has a distinct advantage when it comes
to acceptance into all higher education — graduate school, professional schools like medical school, law school, et cetera — certainly any career path,” Pulos said. “Truly, they’re catapulted to the top of a selection list, from a graduate school to an employer, no matter what area they plan to go into.” According to a report from the University of California-Merced, 97 percent of students who study abroad found employment within 12 months of graduation, with 25 percent higher salaries. Additionally, in terms of continuing education, 90 percent of students who studied abroad who applied were accepted into their first or second choice graduate school. However, one problem often dampens the spirit of students looking to study abroad: finances. Many USF undergrads depend on financial aid of some kind to fund their college career, and often that aid does not seem flexible enough to allow for studying abroad. While programs range in cost in the thousands of dollars, financial aid for summer courses can be applied to study abroad programs, and many dozens of scholarships are available, with new ones introduced every year. The problem with quantifying the cost of studying abroad, Pulos said, is that many aspects of cost must be considered. For instance, a student studying domestically may live at home, so a study abroad program will cost more in terms of housing. And lost wages are another consideration. However, the university and USF World work with students to provide financial assistance. “If you start your (application) process early, … you can go through scholarships, you can find loans, you can save up for it,” Fleming said. “And a lot of people don’t know that if you do an exchange, it’s the same rate as your tuition.” Fleming is used to giving such advice, as she is a GloBull Ambassador. These students have gone abroad and came back wanting to share their experience and help others study abroad. “To reach out to students more, to get the conversation rolling on study abroad: that’s our biggest goal,” she said. “Once people get the idea in their head, they’re pretty determined to study abroad.”
According to Education Abroad, 1,405 USF students went abroad last year. SPECIAL TO THE ORACLE new QEP. “The preliminary assessment Continued from PAGE 1 of the accreditation team’s findings could not have been better,” said there will be an office opened Genshaft said. “That is due to the specifically for maintaining the hard work of USF’s reaccreditation quality of the project. The office will team, as well as the entire campus be open to students who are inter- community.” Genshaft also noted that it is ested in the award and recipients rare for a university as large and thereof. President Judy Genshaft complex as USF to satisfy all 96 released a video earlier this week reaccreditation criteria without any in which she said USF received recommendations. SACSCOC is scheduled to release a “clean bill of health” from the Southern Association of Colleges a full report on its evaluation, as and Schools Commission on well as a vote on the final decision Colleges (SACSCOC), which is for accreditation, at a board meetthe accrediting body for many ing in December. schools, due in part to the
QEP
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have ever hoped to do for him. Rest easy buddy. #TeamNick” Nick’s mother, Christina Wolf, said he passed away at 7:48 p.m. quietly and peacefully. “There are no words to describe our relief that he is not suffering or of our loss,” she posted on Twitter. In August 2013, the team adopted Nick through the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation, a program that pairs children battling pediatric cancer with local high school and college sports teams. Nick was diagnosed with brain cancer on Memorial Day 2011. He beat the disease for a second time in November 2014, but his cancer returned in many parts of his brain about a week before Christmas. According to his mother’s Twitter, Nick lost consciousness April 12, just seven days after his 11th birthday on Easter Sunday. Usually, Nick and his family could be found cheering in the stands at many of the games. Perhaps one of the happiest days the team shared with Nick
was when USF hosted Pirate Day in February 2014. Nick and Scotty became known as the Wolf Pirates. With swords at their sides, they wore white blouses and green and gold beads. Throughout the game against Penn State, the brothers partook in adventures, including saving a damsel in distress, taking over the press box and singing “A Pirate’s Life for Me” during the seventh inning stretch. This season, the players wrote Nick’s initials in black sharpie above the lid and to the left of the Bulls emblem of their white baseball caps. The coaches and players shaved their heads for cancer awareness following the game against Houston on April 26. The team has also raised $16,745 for the Vs. Cancer Foundation. In honor of Nick, there will be a moment of silence before the National Anthem on Thursday, when USF hosts UCF for the final series of the regular season, with the first pitch scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
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ence championships and making only two appearances in the NCAA Championships in the seven seasons before Hill arrived, USF has won the AAC championship in back-to-back seasons and is currently in its second-consecutive run in the NCAA Championships. “The recruiting is different, the culture is different,” Hill said. “The guys coming out now are trying to play professional tennis. And the little stuff like nutrition, sleep patterns and recovery habits. Some of the things that the top teams do.” The players Hill has brought in are already attracting attention at the national level. Junior Roberto Cid is ranked as the No. 21 singles player in the NCAA by the International Tennis Association (ITA). Also, Pramming and freshman Justin Roberts are ranked as the No. 28 doubles team in the nation. But even with USF’s ascension into the top-25 teams in the nation, the team lost two
matches at the tail-end of the season that prompted Hill to hold a team meeting. “I said ‘Look, our goals are to win a national championship and be in Waco at the end of the year,” Hill said. “And if you look at our results right now, we’ve played multiple top-10 teams and lost to all of them. Something has to change. You guys aren’t pushing yourselves hard enough in training to get over the hump of beating these teams and until you start training like you compete in matches, it’ll be tough.’” Hill said the players accepted the challenge of ramping up the intensity and the results are starting to show. “After we got back from TCU, things changed,” Hill said. “The training was much more intense, the coaches were much more intense. The players wanted it more. They didn’t mind us really getting on them in a critical way. We pushed them every day to the max and they accepted that and wanted that and that was our turning point that allowed us to reach the Sweet 16, play-
ing with the best teams in the nation.” Pramming said the team’s improved focus was evident on the practice courts. “Everyone was dialed in,” Pramming said. “When we walked through the gates to the court, everybody was ready to work. So instead of maybe having longer practices, we were just more focused.” Nearly four years after first coming to USF under former coach Don Barr, Pramming is playing each match like it’s his last, as it very well may be. Standing in the way of Pramming and No. 18 USF (216) advancing to the Elite Eight is No. 2 Baylor. The two teams will match up tonight at 8 in Waco, Texas, but despite the Bears holding a 23-5 record, Pramming said the Bulls aren’t nervous. “Obviously they’ve had a good year and have been ranked very highly, but we know that,” he said. “At this point in the season, a ranking is just a number. We’re playing very well at the moment and we’re very confident we can play with anyone.”
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The Knights met the Cougars earlier in their season, winning that game March 27. They have since lost 17 of 26. The Knights found success, however, when they hosted USF earlier this month. They took two of three, outscoring the Bulls 5-1 in the first two games. USF, which is 20-6-1 at home, has the home-field advantage this time around. UCF is 5-14 when playing on the road. Six Knights boast batting averages over .300, with senior Tommy Williams leading the team with a .333 average. USF freshman Kevin Merrell and junior Levi Borders are the only Bulls batting over .300, hitting
.333 and.315, respectively. Merrell is fourth in the nation with 16 sacrifice bunts and Borders leads the Bulls with nine home runs. The Bulls will likely depend on pitching and defense to beat the Knights, who lead the AAC with their collective .298 batting average. USF’s team ERA is 3.82, compared to UCF’s 4.65 ERA, and the Bulls lead the conference with 447 strikeouts, compared to the Knights’ 379. USF is coming off a series against Tulane, in which the Bulls dropped two of three in Louisiana. Tuesday’s game against Jacksonville was canceled because of weather, but the action continues tonight at 6:30 when the Bulls and Knights take the field in Tampa. The second game is set for Friday at 7 p.m., and the series concludes Saturday at 1 p.m.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
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EDITORIAL
Congress limiting financial aid betrays students Despite soaring student loan debt in the U.S. and the everincreasing cost of tuition, Congress could tick off college students by ticking off significant education funding from its budget in the coming year. As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this month, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate republicans settled on a spending blueprint for the next fiscal year that could minimize the Pell Grant and leave student-loan borrowers without crucial benefits. Though these cuts are expected to save taxpayers over $61 billion in the next decade, sacrificing education funds shows how Congress isn’t thinking in the best interest of students and reinforces the view that college is a mere business expense. This reality only highlights the absurdity of reducing federal student aid during a time when college affordability is practically a myth for the nearly 70 percent of college graduates with student debt, a figure reported by the Institute for College Access and Success. As found in a study by Experian, student loan debt reached $1.2 trillion. A Federal Reserve Bank
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of New York study also found that Americans are experiencing more difficulty paying back student loans than other types of debt, such as credit cards and mortgages. One of the many problematic aspects of this spending blueprint is that Pell would no longer be protected by mandatory funding. Instead, the fate of the program’s budget would be decided by the annual appropriations process, which opens the doors to budget cuts. As mentioned in the Chronicle, the advocacy group Committee for Education Funding expects the maximum Pell award to drop by 15.8 percent, or $915, from the $5,775 set for the 2015-16 year. The New York Times also mentioned cuts in the form of offering Pell grants to fewer recipients. The effects of a budget cut would be undoubtedly farreaching. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in the 2012-13 year, the last year data was available, Florida alone had 623,371 Pell recipients, and USF had 16,829 recipients. What may be more concerning is that, as the Chronicle reported, the plan involves forgoing the interest subsidy on Stafford
loans, limiting income-based loan repayment and cutting public-sector loan forgiveness. According to the Committee for Education Funding, this change could lead to an increase in total debt of $4,900 over the next decade for those who borrowed the maximum loan amount. Students carry enough debt as is, and increasing debt while also offering students less grant aid is a betrayal to students, especially considering that the cost of college in the U.S. has already led to criticisms that colleges are businesses. For instance, as addressed in the Guardian, one critic arguing that colleges follow business models explained that students are thought of as “consumers.” The spending blueprint shows such an argument isn’t just a cynical application of capitalism on education in the U.S., especially since appropriators would have to find other areas to trim from the budget if they disagree with the education cuts. If a college education is a way to provide hope for future job security and is deemed necessary for doing so, then Congress needs to value students by making it a plausible and affordable goal.
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What you said Editors Isabelle Cavazos and Adam Mathieu asked students their thoughts on driverless cars being on the road after a new Associated Press report found that 11 minor accidents occurred during testing with Google’s self-driving cars in the past six years.
“Those cars have to be better than humans, but they don’t have to be completely perfect.” — Karthika Dhanapalan, a graduate student studying management information systems “I would definitely want them to be completely reliable, but wouldn’t they expect glitches?” — Gabriela Perez, a junior majoring in cell and molecular biology
“I think it’s a great idea because it reduces human error; but if it’s faced with an obstacle, would it hit it or swerve and hurt the person in the car?” — Naga Vallamkondu, a sophomore majoring in biomedical sciences
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“I feel like if there are accidents occurring, then there needs to be more work. It would be difficult to introduce driverless cars on roads that don’t just have those cars.” — Mirella Huber, a junior majoring in interdisciplinary natural science
Classifieds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
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Sports
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
The Rundown New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. won a fan vote to be pictured on the cover of the video game Madden NFL ‘16 on Wednesday. Beckham, 22, is the youngest player to be featured on the cover of Madden. He beat out finalist Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots by receiving 53 percent of votes.
Weekend Events •
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The USF men’s golf team will play in the NCAA Regionals in New Haven, Connecticut, beginning Thurday and ending Saturday. The USF track and field team will compete in the AAC Championships in Storrs, Connecticut on Saturday.
Baseball Standings
1. Houston (36-17, 13-8) 2. East Carolina (33-20, 12-9)
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Pramming, Bulls set for Sweet 16 S P O R T S
E D I T O R
When Oliver Pramming first set foot on the USF tennis courts as a freshman in the fall of 2011, the program was in much different shape than it is now. With coaching changes and an infusion of talented players over the past four years, the Bulls have gone from regularly missing the NCAA Championships to now preparing for their first-ever Sweet 16 match tonight. “It’s a really different team,” Pramming said. “Not one guy that’s here now apart from me was here back then. Of course it was a little different, I was a younger guy and the team was older. A lot of Latin guys were there so it was kind of different coming from Europe.” Pramming said the Bulls’ success can be attributed to coach Matt Hill, who took over after the 2011-12 season. “It’s grown dramatically,” Pramming said. “After coach Hill came in, he recruited a
lot of new guys who came in with a lot of hunger. It’s been a great experience, especially with me being a senior, seeing everyone do well.” While success has followed Hill’s arrival at USF, he said the Bulls couldn’t have made it this far in the season without the leadership of Pramming, the lone senior on the team. “He’s handled (being the only senior) like a champion,” Hill said. “He clinched the conference championship last year and this year. Mentally, he’s been one of the strongest guys on the team in the second half of the season and that’s great for the rest of the team to see how he responds on the court as you expect a senior to do.” Pramming, who is 9-4 in singles play this season, has grown to not only be a leader and role model for the younger players, but also one of the top players on the team. “It’s been an incredible growth over the past three years for him really,” Hill said. “He’s probably, in the 10 years
Oliver Pramming has played an essential role in leading the Bulls to the Sweet 16. ORACLE FILE PHOTO/SEBASTIAN CONTENTO I’ve been coaching, the most improved player I’ver ever coached. He’s turning some weaknesses into weapons and it’s really great to see.”
With the hiring of Hill and Pramming’s development, USF is reaching new heights. After winning no confer-
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Baseball
USF hosts UCF in crucial final series By Tiana Aument
3. Memphis (34-17, 11-10)
C O R R E S P O N D E N T
4. Tulane (31-20, 11-10) 5. USF (30-21-1, 11-10) 6. UConn (33-20, 11-10) 7. UCF (30-23, 9-13) 8. Cincinnati (15-36, 6-15)
BASEBALL
UCF (30-23, 9-13) at USF (30-21-1, 11-10) When: Tonight @ 7 Where: USF Baseball Stadium TV/Radio: BullsCast/1010 AM
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By Vinnie Portell
Outside USF
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After leading USF to first place in the AAC over two months into the season, coach Mark Kingston has seen the Bulls lose seven of their past nine games. ORACLE FILE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU
The rivalry between USF and UCF is nothing short of intense. When the Bulls hosted the Knights last season, the Knights’ bench cleared in the fifth inning of the final game after a series of trash talking. This season, the focus will likely be at an all-time high with plenty at stake. With only three games remaining in the regular season, both teams are battling for a better seeding in the AAC tournament, which begins Tuesday at Bright House Field in Clearwater. Currently, USF is tied for third with three other teams, while UCF is seventh of eight teams.
As much as the Bulls (30-21-1, 11-10) and Knights (30-23, 9-13) would like to be different, their similarities are glaring. Both started their seasons on hot streaks. USF sat atop the standings for about nine weeks, starting the season 28-14-1 overall and 9-4 in conference play. Meanwhile, UCF started its season 21-6 overall and 1-0 in conference play. Since then, both teams have cooled down drastically. It seems the series against Houston, now the first-place team, marked the turning point in both of their seasons. The Bulls beat the Cougars in their first meeting April 24, but have lost seven of nine since.
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