UNM Students: Take a Back Seat

I chose to take on this topic primarily because of events that take place where, as a student, I feel I have been neglected. Too many times through the course of my collegiate I have felt as though I have played second to alumni, faculty and sponsors who donate to the University. Granted these people have paid their dues and do have heavy influence on the University, but does that come at the price of the students.

Example 1. I attended a symposium at the SUB a couple of weeks ago honoring Mr. Ximenez, a distinguished writer in the Mexican-American culture (I will call him Mr. Ximenez because I don’t remember his first name). As I walked into the SUB ballroom I was excited to see empty tables filled with three course meals. My eyes immediately lit up! As I proceeded to a table I was stopped by security and asked to take a seat along the wall with the other students. How is that I pay over $2000 dollars in tuition, but yet I am forced to sit on the wall while there are rows of empty tables that can be filled by us students?

The tables were set aside for distinguished guests…… They were all prominent figures in the University, as well as in the community. Granted these people were of importance, but did students have to be subjugated to sitting against the wall while all these “other’ people eat. I should say lack of other people because the room was nearly empty at this point, well except for all the students sitting against the wall.

Why couldn’t the university make room for us, or at least throw us a lunchable when they knew we would be attending as well? Anyhow I think it was very degrading to have to sit on the side of the wall and watch these other people partake in the three course meal!

Example 2- The atmosphere of UNM athletics is awesome! The sights of tailgaters, bands, and painted faces are entertaining. What concerns me is the way students have been treated. I think that UNM should extend a shuttle to UNM students so that it isn’t a pain in the you know what to find a parking and moreover find the area for UNM entrance. Again, alumni and sponsors have curbside service that take them right to their parking and entrance. I know they are important, but I can guarantee our tuition far outweighs their contributions. At the previous University I went to, students were assigned a lot to park in that was close and near our entrance. Small detail, but it showed they cared….

On a good note I am happy to see the weekly communication sent out by President Schmidly. It is a step in the right direction that encourages student participation. I look forward to reading his weekly prompt. I think other University leaders should take the initiative and involve the students a little more as well.

-Adam

North Campus Development

In the daily Lobo on November 5th I read about how President Shmidly and the University Board of Regents are looking at proposals to develop part of the land on the North campus golf course. It talked about how the university looking to make some money has decided to look into options for developing the land, so far making a retirement community the most likely bet. Their plan is to take part of the land and build the home that would cater to retired faculty staff and alumni and with that they estimate they could generate a couple million dollars to put into other programs on campus.

However many people seem to be opposed to this plan as am I. Not only are they attacking the golf course, which over the many years since it was built has gone from 27 holes to nine, but they are also attacking valuable green space. As it is the Albuquerque metro/ university area is lacking in green, being built up every minute, but building, if even only on a part of the land, is only encouraging the developing. I can understand how they want to utilize what resources they have to make some much needed money instead of spending it on water for the course but if they start in one corner what would stop them from making excuses to build up on the rest.

Luckily, and this might be the only time I’m on Martin Chavez side , the Mayor and apparently the city are as opposed to the idea as most of the North Campus neighborhood. They don’t want to see the golf course divided up and green space taken away, and have openly said they will not support any bid to develop on the land. Even tough the University owns the land they need the cities permission to build and ultimately one would hope the University listened to the community because I feel we all own the University. The President of the University and the board of regents are there to help the place run but it’s the community that supports it, the students that fund it and all the other people who contribute something or other or work there that own it, and as such I think we should all have a say in what happens. Taking a place that harbors recreation, calmness and peace in nature (even if it is just a golf game, a weekend picnic a walk) and diminishing it by building in it and marketing to a certain age group and clientele. Just kind of stinks.

This is how I personally feel but Id love to hear other opinions, or other sides of the story. I read a couple articles on the matter but I was not present at the rally or anything having read about it later. But what about the green space issue, should it not be built upon just because it’s green space, or should more be taken into account. Does the University have a point trying to make more money and at that should the University be allowed to do with their land what they want to do or should the community and city be heard too.

-Maria

Online Education

There are so many oppotunities to get an education now a days and one of the most criticised is Online Education. This type of education affords people the chance to incorporate education into their already busy schedule. The idea of being able to access your classes from anywhere at anytime of the day or night is rapidly spreading while the question of online educations accreditation is still not answered according to most.

I began my educational journey with just one class at a time. It was a hassle to incorporate one class with a full time job, mother of four demanding kind of schedule that I had. I even tried taking full time face to face classes...only worked for one term. This is when I realized that if I did online courses I would be able to work school into my schedule. Many people frown at my education when they learn that it is online.....these people are ones that are older than me and had the ability as well as the opportunity to attend face to face classes. You know how times change and some don't accept it, well that is how it seems to be in the world today. I think that online education is just as hard if not harder than face to face classes. The instuctor's leave your assignments and trust that you will "come to class', so to speak to get the infromation needed. Also there is much exploration involved in online education. One is pushed to class discussions and graded for participation in these discussions.....if you don't speak you don't get the points...and it hurts your grade. I don't recall ever being penalized for not speaking in any of my face to face classes ever. There are quizzes, referrals to other sites that compliment the assignments given, and other little extra readings that you don't have to encounter in those face to faces classes.

Many companies frown at a degree that are obtained thru correspondence schools or some of the smaller on line educators. If the degree is attached to a university or well known educator then it is more likely that it will be an acceptable certifiction. There are many schools that offer these get it quick in three weeks degree and those are the types of educators that business people don't care to work with. The quality of education a person receives in a three week course does not compare to the quality of taking the course over a fifteen week period. That would result in condensing the course way to much. How much would a person retain? This is the quetion that many have in reegards to online education. But what they fail to realize is that not all educators aree the same. There are the educational establishments that are concerned about the quality of education the person receives. This is why they restict the type of classes that are offered online. Some courses just have to be taught in a physical form in order for the student to retain the information properly.

What might one of you reading this blog think about on line education? I would like to know if anyone agrees with what i mentioned in how the online education was obtained? The difernce in eductional establishments for example?

Yvette

Parking Permits

I believe that parking on campus is a huge issue on campus today. I really don’t see a reason that we are forced to pay for parking. I cannot understand why parking would not be included in our tuition costs being a necessary factor in our ability to get to class. I think that it should be included in our tuition and the only way we should be charged to park is if we were to obtain a parking pass that would allow us to directly park on campus and not have to worry about having to wait for the bus to pick you up and shuttle you to campus.

I have had many times where I arrive at the south lot bus stop 20 minutes before class is to start and still end up late to class. The busses are not efficient and should be on a strict time frame. There are sometimes when there will be three busses or more that are right behind each other and if you miss those busses you have to wait for them to go to campus and loop back around. Instead of all bunching up together they should be on set intervals so every 5 minutes there is a bus stopping at south lot, the yale mall, and the research stops.

In addition if we are going to have to pay for parking pass we should not have to pay more than fifty dollars for a pass. It is ridiculous to have to pay 100+ for a permit that we must have in order to park without any violations. Also if we need to park in the structure I don’t understand the reason that structure prices are so high. I think it should be a set amount for a set amount of time. 1.60 per hour is outrageous. Also I think it should break the time into half hour intervals. I don’t see a reason why we would have to pay an extra 1.60 because you went over the hour by just a few minutes. I think that UNM should come up with a more efficient and reliable system in order to make students happier and getting to class a lot easier.

-Lauren

The Internet: The death-knell of academia?

Recently, I read an article in which a college professor grumbles about the state of research papers he receives, blaming both “word processers” and the internet. He complains of students who cheat paper-length by adjusting margins or font size, list unattributed quotes or out-of-date sources. He feels that even those sources that are current are somehow suspect. He goes on to muse that he would like for his “university's computer system […] crash for a day, so that [he] could encourage them to go outside, sit under a tree, and read a really good book -- from start to finish.” It was this last sentence that particularly struck a nerve and made me want to track this guy down and smack him a good one. Who did he think he was?

The idea that students don’t go out and sit under a tree and read a really good book because of the internet is ludicrous. For one thing, there are many students who are not going to go and read a book for pleasure – under a tree or anywhere. And there are freaks like me who would love to go sit under a tree with a book. I would love to be able to go to a bookstore and pick-up a good book and read it for enjoyment in the middle of a semester. If anything, the ability to do research online has given me the extra time to – barely – read the novel a week required in most Lit classes, along with the novel-length reading from textbooks required each week from other classes. This on top of writing assignments and other research projects. I’m not afraid of homework. I actually enjoy the majority of it. I realize there is a lot of material to cover in a semester and it seems that no one ever gets to it all. But what winds up happening is a lot of professors assigning a lot of reading. The result being that the half the class who actually read the assignment (in half of the time they should have spent on it,) wind up comprehending only half the material. (The other half of the class winds up comprehending nothing because they didn’t do the reading at all.) Rather than concentrating on the quality of the student’s understanding, the schools focus on the quantity of material covered.

The other point in this article that bothered me was that the professor – like many others – feel that using the internet for research is, somehow, lazy or cheating. They somehow feel that research that is not done by spending hours in the library is not research at all. This, of course, is analogous to your parents telling you how they had to walk ten miles to school, or how they only had three channels on TV when they were your age. To be sure there are lazy and/or stupid students who don’t see why plagiarism is wrong, but I think they are in the minority.

The online educational community has policed itself and responded to the complaint of academics. Not that long ago, we were admonished to not use Google for research purposes, yet today we have “Google Scholar” – featuring thousands of scholarly articles from journals and other accepted sources – on the UNM research database. There was a time, to be sure, that I might have found myself in the library for the weekend, poring through stacks of books, walking all over hell and creation in search of a book that was not on the shelf. Or I might track down a book through InterLibrary Loan, and have to wait for it to arrive. Thanks to great online Research and Database Index at UNM, this information is at my fingertips anytime of the day or night. Recently there was a water-main break at Zimmerman library – shutting the place down. When it reopened, services were limited. But those of us off-campus, at home in the middle of the night didn’t even know. We were able to continue with our work.

The internet is here to stay. An obvious statement, but a point that professors need to take to heart. Rather than complain about what they deem to be sloppy study habits by students, they need to focus on how to teach students to better use computers as tools for learning, perhaps even by requiring a 100 level class that teaches students how to use all that the computer offer them in a legitimate and scholarly manner. But more than that, we, as students/consumers, need to demand our money’s worth from our education. We need to demand quality of information over quantity. We are in college, not just to learn, but to learn how to learn. There is no room for instructors who are egocentric, Luddite, or, in the case of more than a few I’ve encountered, feel that we can learn more from each other than they can teach us.

~ Rick Raab-Faber

Study Abroad and Studio Arts

International study abroad

Just about this time last year, I wrote an essay to earn a scholarship to study art in China, the maximum award was at $1,000. Don’t count on the maximum amount, as it turned out, I got a $500 grant.

The cost for a two week study in China, visiting three major cities, was $2,700. Financial Aid would go $1,500; however, the trip was going to happen before the financial aid kicked in. It was May fifth, and I didn’t have a passport yet, expedition the process was an extra charge. I really didn’t get that far, because it was too tight financially for me to go that year.

What ended up happening, as I later read, was that passports were held up, and some people couldn’t go because they didn’t have their papers in order. Therefore, it is recommended that you get passports long before the month of departure.

To make sure you are able to purchase airfare, plan in advance. The airline tickets which were $1,300 had to be paid up front. That’s as far as I can take you. I did hope to go this year, but as of October 21, 2007 the China Study Abroad wasn’t happening. My guess is that because China is hosting the Olympics, it would be too much congestion.

The person to talk to is Ken Carpenter at the Study Abroad Office, Mesa Vista Hall. He takes appointments and discusses the options with you. He is a very nice guy, and he knows a lot. When I met with him he told me about another China program through the Taos, NM branch with a 70 year old Chinese teacher who is female and who teaches both art and Marshal arts, that was of interest to me.

I also found out, that there are three semester long UNM affiliated programs for the BFA program; meaning that the financial aid, grants, and scholarships for tuition would apply just like they would at home, as if you traveled to these countries. I think most of them were a matter of you paying housing costs. The countries with art programs are China, requiring a basic Chinese language course, Prague, Czech, or Glasgow, UK. The Regents Grant is the only available money for this study abroad, for any of the three choices.

I have gone online, and I asked for catalogs from them all. The school in Glasgow is the only one of the three that sent me their catalog.

-Buenacompa