The All State

» By CHRIS COPPEDGE – ccoppedge@my.apsu.edu

APSU looks to reach out to freshmen and nontraditional students with new class bundling and expanded child care programs available during registration for the Fall 2012 semester.

The bundling involves 24 freshman sections of writing classes, history classes and the APSU 1000 course. New students will be guided through this aspect of the registration during summer welcome.

“When an incoming freshman books into a bundle, they will also become part of a group of 20 or so other freshman that will be in precisely those same sections with them,” said Tristan Denley, provost. “This creates a synergy between those classes and the faculty involved and a learning community of students.”

While the university already provides child care for students who may also be parents, this too will undergo changes. Beverly Boggs, associate provost for Enrollment Management and Academic Support, explained the current child care center plans to expand its hours for parents registered for courses that hold classes after 5 p.m.

“The plan is for the registration in these evening classes to trigger an e-mail that contains the enrollment form the center currently uses,” Boggs said. “We hope this will allow greater flexibility for parents of young children in their class section.”

As led by President June Knight, the Nontraditional Student Society seems very pleased with the new arrangement. “We believe this is a great idea because APSU’s goal is to help each student become successful,” Knight said.

Knight believes nontraditional students with families want to feel the university will allow them to fulfill both their student and parental roles.

“We hear from many nontraditional students that when their children are sick, or their babysitter situation doesn’t work out, that some of the professors do not excuse that absence,” Knight said. “If APSU is willing to alleviate that pressure for the nontraditional students, then NTSS fully supports it.”

“I think it’s a great idea to group students together,” said Paul Storms. “It’s the kind of thing that can help people make friends from the start.”

Others disagree.

“It smells too much like high school, and I came to college to get away from that,” said Tyler Swanberg.

Freshman Alex Arnold said he wouldn’t have taken the option even if it had been available for his registration last year.

“When you have an overpopulated campus like this, it’s harder to get that sense of community between students,” he said.

The bundling and child care programs were created by the university’s team whom participated in the Tennessee College Completion Academy forum during 2011’s fall semester, Denley said.

The Tennessee Report website notes in a press release the Completion Academy is “a state-level simulation of the national academies developed by Complete College America, a national organization committed to increasing U.S. college completion.” TAS

» By TIFFANY HALL – thall29@my.apsu.edu

Students, faculty, staff and alumni from all racial, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds came together on Thursday, March 29, to honor Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in Sanford, Fla. last month.

Lelann Evans, a junior, started the ceremony by saying he wanted to raise awareness of the awful injustice that happened last month. He proceeded by stating the facts of the case: George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man, allegedly shot Martin, a 17-year-old African-American boy.

He said this was not an issue of race, but rather an issue of injustice.

Evans also noted the importance of directing everyone’s anger, and that the public cannot be responsible for whether or not Zimmerman goes to jail.

“In America, you are innocent until proven guilty. Zimmerman should be heard in the court of law to determine whether or not he is innocent, by a jury of peers. None of us have the right to determine that. That is our constitution,” Evans said.

He also said every student on campus had the opportunity to walk across a stage and receive a high school diploma. Evans said Martin will never have that chance. He will also never be able to kiss his mother goodbye as he goes to college, or ever have the chance to experience college, simply because another man took it into his own hands to determine whether or not Martin lived.

“Taking another man’s life should always be an injustice. There is no reason that we should ever have to kill somebody,” Evans said.

Another speaker, Sarah Key, freshman, took the microphone to show her anger. She believes that Zimmerman committed a crime and that he should have to pay.

“I am angry that a child born in the United States was killed in cold blood and there is nothing happening about this,” Key said. She also said she was angry because Martin’s alleged murderer will walk free. She is sad for Martin’s mother and father and sad for all of the people that took the time to get to know him. “I am saddened by the tastes, smells and experiences he will never have. I am saddened by all of the goals that he will never meet,” Key said.

Key said she does not understand how she can have a future, while Martin’s was taken away from him. She believes Zimmerman did not see anything about Martin, just his skin, and that is what led to Zimmerman allegedly shooting him.

She also emphasized this was not a black versus white issue or Caucasian versus Latino.

According to Key, Martin was just a child with his whole future in front of him.

She said she thought America would be beyond shooting one another and beyond killing children. One of the note cards written by students was read out loud by Terrance Myatt, a senior: “Black hoodie, iced tea, skittles, black … am I next?”
“I have that can of tea here, and I have that bag of skittles here because these are the weapons that a young man was armed with the night that he was brutally murdered and shot down,” said Wanda McMoore, APSU alumni.

McMoore said each student on campus has the potential to be an influential voice in the public and other people’s lives.

She said it is very important everyone has the right to their own opinion, but everyone should stand by the facts.

She ended her speech by putting her hood on, held up the bag of skittles and tea, and said, “Let go of any subconscious prejudices that you may have, and put yourself in Trayvon’s hoodie and all you have is a bag of skittles and iced tea.”

Then the 911 calls from Zimmerman and an eye witness were played for everyone to hear.

The last speaker, a U.S. veteran of nearly 20 years, Turner McCullen stood up.

He explained he had walked the streets of many countries and that he was never once looked at as a suspicious person.

He said he was so ashamed to know he fought for the freedom of the United States.

He said he feels like he has to fear for his grandchild the same way that his grandparents feared for him nearly 40 years ago.

“America is supposed to be the land of dreams for us all. I gave my life and health to this country, and I am upset that young black men are being targeted because they are young black men walking someplace that any other person has the right to walk on,” McCullen said.

One student, Kyle Donald, said he was shocked to know Zimmerman has not been put in jail.

“I cannot believe that Zimmerman is still in the public. He killed someone and should be in jail,” Donald said.
“Tomorrow, when you wake up to go to your 8 o’clock class and you don’t want to, be motivated, because Trayvon Martin will never get the chance to experience an 8 o’clock class,” Evans said. TAS

» STAFF REPORT

The Degree Compass software, formerly known as the Course Recommendation system, is APSU’s newest resource to help students gather information about what classes they should take.

Degree Compass is used to help make course selection less of a maze and more of a path to keep students on track.

“Degree Compass is used to try to give as much information to help students make the best decisions,” said Tristan Denley, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs.

The system is meant to simplify advising and to help better educate students on the classes they need or want to take. How the system works is actually pretty straightforward.

Currently, the program looks at many variables that are unique to each student. It looks at the students’ transcripts, the courses they’ve taken and what courses they still have to take. Degree Compass takes into account degree evaluation as well as each student’s individual course bulletin requirements.

The analytics behind grade predictions are accurate. “If Degree Compass says you will get a C or better, you will actually get a C or better,” Denley said.

In the future, Denley said the next step in Degree Compass would be to incorporate a way to help students pick majors, as well as including an option to have students register for classes within Degree Compass rather than using the separate registration area within Self-Registration. TAS

» By BRITTANY WESTER-bwester2@my.apsu.edu

Students need a little help deciding what courses to take, so all students are assigned advisers. However, because advisers are assigned several students, some students may not receive the best help possible concerning the proper courses to take. To assist students who need a
little extra help, there is a new system in APSU’s OneStop called Degree Compass, which suggests the courses that are best fit for students to take in the upcoming semester.

This year, Degree Compass has made APSU one of the finalists to receive a Learning Impact recognition award from the IMS Global Learning Consortium.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium is a nonprofit organization working with universities, school districts, government organizations, content providers and technology suppliers to open up new areas for academic progress through technology. Every year they conduct a global meeting to discuss different kinds of higher initiatives for progress. This year the organization is specifically focusing on trying to help students move through degrees efficiently, something APSU has been working to do. Every year they have a set of awards they give for different software products and initiatives that are being put into place, which they feel are making an important impact in academia.

The new system helped Tennessee to receive a $1 million grant from Complete College America and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year. Part of the grant went to help get Degree Compass implemented at three other schools. It has been decided Nashville State, Volunteer State and the University of Memphis will be the first three institutions, aside from APSU, to use Degree Compass. They are expected to be able to use the new system for their students starting in the summer.

Degree Compass was first called “The Netflix Project” said Charles Wall, the director of the Information Technologies Department. Tristan Denley, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs, who came up with the idea of creating this recommendation system, said this recommendation engine is very much in the spirit of Netflix, Pandora or Amazon.

Instead of suggesting the different kinds of movies you might like, Degree Compass suggests the courses that best fit students and their program of studies by looking at their transcript and ranking a list of courses.

Denley and the IT Department are continually working together to make improvements. They are welcoming feedback with suggestions and ideas of improvement from students on the site.

One improvement they are working on is trying to recommend majors for students who are undecided based on predicted grades.

Denley said the grade predictions are actually pretty accurate. These predictions are used to see what kinds of areas students may have a talent for that they may not have realized or thought about. Denley is hoping this improvement will be ready before the end of the semester.

“It’s been really exciting to put this together. We are happy we’re able to have this for students to more effectively move themselves through their degree programs,” Denley said.

Denley conceived of the idea in the summer of 2010. He spent six months developing the mathematics and algorithms that work behind the system and created a working prototype on his laptop. It was then time to make it available to students. He spent about another six months working with the Information Technologies Department’s staff to deploy this new system on OneStop. It took a little less than a year to put it together. TAS

» ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — As demonstrations swirled outside, Supreme Court justices signaled on Monday they are ready to confront without delay the keep-or-kill questions at the heart of challenges to President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul. Virtually every American will be affected by the outcome, due this summer in the heat of the election campaign.

On the first of three days of arguments — the longest in decades — none of the justices appeared to embrace the contention that it was too soon for a decision.

Outside the packed courtroom, marching and singing demonstrators on both sides — including doctors in white coats, a Republican presidential candidate and even a brass quartet — voiced their eagerness for the court to either uphold or throw out the largest expansion in the nation’s social safety net since Medicare was enacted in 1965.

Tuesday’s arguments will focus on the heart of the case, the provision that aims to extend medical insurance to 30 million more Americans by requiring everyone to carry insurance or pay a penalty.

A decision is expected by late June as Obama fights for re-election. All of his Republican challengers oppose the law and promise its repeal if the high court hasn’t struck it down in the meantime.

On Monday, the justices took on the question of whether an obscure tax law could derail the case.

The 19th century law bars tax disputes from being heard in the courts before the taxes have been paid.

Under the new health care law, Americans who don’t purchase health insurance would have to report that omission on their tax returns for 2014 and would pay a penalty along with federal income tax on returns due by April 2015. Among the issues facing the court is whether that penalty is a tax.

The justices also will take up whether the rest of the law can remain in place if the insurance mandate falls and, separately, whether Congress lacked the power to expand the Medicaid program to cover 15 million low-income people who currently earn too much to qualify.

If upheld, the law will force dramatic changes in the way insurance companies do business, including forbidding them from denying coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions and limiting how much they can charge older people. The law envisions that insurers will be able to accommodate older and sicker people without facing financial ruin because of its most disputed element, the requirement that Americans have insurance or pay a penalty.

By 2019, about 95 percent of the country will have health insurance if the law is allowed to take full effect, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

Polls have consistently shown the public is at best ambivalent about the benefits of the health care law, and that a majority of Americans believe the insurance requirement is unconstitutional. TAS

» ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Hundreds rallied Monday at the location where Martin Luther King Jr. was slain in Memphis to call for the arrest of a Florida man in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager.

The rally at the National Civil Rights Museum featured speeches from Memphis-area activists and Mayor A C Wharton, who is black.

Children joined adults, and whites joined blacks, at the rally. Participants held up signs saying “Why?” and “We are Trayvon.” Most bowed their heads in a three-minute prayer during a ceremony that also included poetry readings.

Trayvon Martin, 17, was killed Sunday, Feb. 26, in a neighborhood in Sanford, Fla. A neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother Hispanic, has said he shot Martin in self-defense.

Police said the teen did not have a gun. Zimmerman has not been arrested.

Angela Martin, 45 and no relation to the slain teen, watched the crowd gather from a nearby fire escape. A mother of a 14-year-old boy and a 21-year-old college student, the nurse practitioner said either one of her children could have been Martin “at the wrong moment.”

“When I heard about this, my heart just broke,” said Martin, who is black.

The museum is located at the site of the former Lorraine Motel where King was shot on a balcony on April 4, 1968. King was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike.

The hotel is considered hallowed ground by black Memphis residents and civil rights activists alike.

“He died fighting for our civil rights,” Martin said of King. “And Trayvon’s civil rights were just violated.”

Wharton said people across the mid-South should set aside their differences and stand in support of the slain teen. He also denounced attempts to portray the teen in a negative light after it was revealed he had been suspended from school for marijuana.
“Even if he had been a bad boy, he deserved to live,” Wharton said. TAS