The TSU Student Government Blog

The confusing proccess that is Credit no Credit made clear

The idea behind taking classes credit no credit is one that both faculty and students could get behind. Students are given the opportunity to take classes that are interesting, and that allow them to explore new areas without having the risk of hurting their GPA. This kind of exploration is what a liberal arts education is supposed to be all about. But up until a week ago there were odd restrictions and miscommunications that kept the sprit of this idea from coming to anything.

It used to be that students could only take 5 hours of credit no credit per semester, totaling to 12 credit hours over the span of time you’re at Truman. This equated to one class. The thing Academic Affairs realized is that students weren’t really using the credit no credit option much at all. That is, until they were upperclassman with little of their requirements left to fulfill. These students who are in a prime position to explore many different courses in their last year or so, were restricted to only one course.

Thanks to active work by Student Senate this policy has now been changed. Students can now take up to 8 hours credit no credit a semester. And, here’s how you do it.

Contact the Associate Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs/Dean of Graduate Studies: Dr. Maria Di Stefano mdistefa@truman.edu and ask her to review your case. You should probably have a statement ready to justify why you want to take two courses credit no credit, and that reason probably shouldn’t be “to make my semester easier”. However, I know that most students will use this correctly, and that we deserve the opportunity to take advantage of this policy.

So, go out there, explore classes and try new things, because, now, you can!

Posted by Academic Affairs in Academic Affairs | 2 Comments »

Professor Ratings

I’d like to give everyone an update about the professor rating committee.

Things are finally moving ahead with this committee. Undergraduate Council just passed a resolution that came out of student senate about getting syllabi on the internet. This is one of the things that will be discussed by the committee. The list of students who will be members of this committee is as follows:

Karli Rae Kerr - Student At Large

Charity Fitten - Student At Large

Kristel Givogue - Student Senate

Lizz Esfeld - Student Senate

Ryan Saffir - Graduate Student

I’m really interested in getting some ideas on what everyone thinks should be included in professor ratings. It would theoretically be a list of questions that a student would fill out pertaining to a professor. I want to know what you would like to see what you register about a professor or course.

Posted by Academic Affairs in Academic Affairs | 7 Comments »

Minutes Now Current

After receiving some concerns that Senate’s minutes page was not current, I’ve gone in and made sure that we’re back-up-to-date. The Secretary and I are going to make a concerned effort to post these documents as soon as they are available, as opposed to in bulk, like today.

One final item that remains to be dealt with is getting resolutions up. That problem is being addressed though; I’ll post something when we’ve got them up.

If you ever have any other concerns about the site, please e-mail me so we can resolve them as quickly as possible!

P.S.: This includes ExComm minutes, all of which were previously unavailable. My apologies again for the wait!

Posted by webmaster in Site Maintenance | No Comments »

This Weekend In Kirksville

Bored?  Looking for adventure within a 30-mile confine?  Here’s what’s happening in NEMO this weekend:

“Encounters with Lincoln,” an exhibition of artwork created by Truman Professor of Music Education Thomas Trimborn, will be on exhibit downtown at the Kirksville Arts Association building through the 29th of February.  Stop by 9-11 a.m. Monday through Thursday, 5-7 p.m. Fridays, or 1-3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.  The KAA is located at 117 S. Franklin Street.  (Note: individuals who feel that, contrary to popular belief, the South actually did win the Civil War may not enjoy this particular exhibit.) 

Trek on over to La Plata to attend the opening of the brand new “Silver Rails Event Center” center in the downtown district.  This is a new center available for business conferences, weddings, and other social events,  and there will be a free open house with refreshments running from about 3:30 PM until 5:00 PM.  Free food, new place to host a party…you really can’t go wrong.

All you brides-to-be take note: the 2008 Northeast Missouri Bridal Expo will be happening at the Silver Rails Event Center this Sunday, February 24.  Not planning on getting hitched in Kirksville?  Come to get ideas: there will be up to 50 local NE Missouri vendors, including caterers, photographers, invitation designers, venues, consultants, and DJ’s.

The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program will be offering free tax filing assistance for anyone who needs it.  Stop by Violette Hall 2424, 8:00am-3:00pm now through March 1.  Why should you do it?  Because none of the cool kids are getting audited by the IRS this spring break, and neither should you.

This weekend at the Downtown Cinema 8: “There Will Be Blood” (”Tastefully” violent and with Daniel Day-Lewis, it will most likely win an Oscar), “Vantage Point” (The President is assassinated, but everyone sees something different), “Witless Protection” (Has Larry the Cable Guy and Joe Mantengna!), “Jumper” (Sci-Fi flick with Sammy L. Jackson), “The Spiderwick Chronicles” (Sci-Fi flick based off of a magical children’s book series), “Step Up 2: The Streets” (Lots of people dancing to lots of danceable music), “Fool’s Gold” (Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey’s “marriage” is on the rocks; watch them search for treasure), “The Bucket List” (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are dying from cancer, but they still manage to have fun), “Semi-Pro” (Will Ferrel is a 1976 basketball player in the NBA).  Visit the Downtown Cinema 8 website for more information.

Posted by External Affairs in External Affairs | 1 Comment »

“Townies” and “Gownies”: A Winning Combination

Raise your hand if you’ve ever used the word “townie.”  Now raise your hand if you’ve ever wished that “there was more to do in Kirksville.”  This, in a nutshell, sums up what was yesterday called the “Town-Gown” (as in academic/graduation gown, I presume?) relationship that exists between the community and the university: many students wish there was more to do in the ‘Ville, but like, ohmigod, WHY would you ever want to do anything that this town would call “entertainment”?  Ah, the beloved Catch-22 strikes again.

When I was a freshman, I think a typical “what to do in Kirksville” train of thought ran along the lines of, “WalMart, Train Bridge, Thousand Hills……..WalMart at night?…”  For me, Kirksville consisted of Truman State University, Bellacino’s, Highway 63, and WalMart.  That’s it.  And I imagine that, for some Freshman (and probably some upperclassmen too, unfortunately) Kirksville still looks like this.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that there’s a sprightly group of community-oriented individuals looking to change this, and that YOU, should you be so inclined, should get in on the action.  Yesterday, we discussed what some of the “root causes” of this highly dysfunctional relationship were, an enlightening and often somewhat disheartening exercise that saw these and other suggestions proffered from students, faculty, administration and residents:

• You have virtually everything you need on campus, so why go off?
• During Freshman Orientation week, the emphasis is on acclimatizing the guppies to their new home in the University pond, and the town just kind of sits there looking like this polluted murky water that might kill you should you venture out into it.  While some professors make it a point to incorporate a tour of the community into their class schedule, not all do, and so after the first week’s on-campus activities the guppies are more than happy to frolic within the familiar confines of the Bulldagua.
• There is serious lack of communication between businesses and the student body about daily/weekly specials that we, as the designated cheapness-lovers of the universe, would fully take advantage of if we were made aware of their existence.
• Some students have no personal investment in the community; they don’t get involved, either because they simply aren’t interested or would like to, but don’t know where to begin looking.
• Two words: economic development.  Someone actually referred to Kirksville as a “dying town” yesterday…not a good sign.

The fact that all the students, faculty, administration and residents were just as willing to offer solutions as they were to identify problems yesterday says a lot about the future of this committee, and the caliber of projects you can expect to see coming out of it.  A few of the ideas:

• Emphasize “service-learning” courses at Truman: serving in the community while earning credit, and, most importantly, learning about life and your community from hands-on experience.
• Have an essential part of “Truman Week” be community immersion, tying in that week’s class to it’s real-world applications in Kirksville.
• Encourage the extension of the bike paths throughout the entire city; Kirksville is small enough to be an easily-travelled town, so why should the bike paths only exist around campus?
• Create an online “kirksville.truman.edu” website that contains information about weekly specials, activities, bands, and events that restaurants, businesses and organizations have going on, to encourage student-participation in the Kirksville economy.
• Speaking of the economy, why not draw upon the huge resource that is the University to help foster and entrench both student and local entrepreneurial ventures?

If you have any comments or ideas, or just a general desire to help out, feel free to post a comment; or, better yet, email Michael McMannis and ask to get involved with his committee!  Gandhi said that we need to “be the change we wish to see in the world;” I say, if it worked for Gandhi, it works for me.  (Except that whole victory-through-hunger-strike thing, but that’s another blogpost.)  Cheers!

EA

Posted by External Affairs in External Affairs | No Comments »

University Conference Day Reactions

The University Conference today was very interesting in some ways and not so interesting in other ways.  I think that may have to do with the fact that this year’s conference was not quite as student-oriented as last year’s; I felt like students were invited but we were really not reached out too like in the past.  That said, I think there was a lot of good discussion and every session I went to, I was thanked for bringing some student input. 

 The biggest thing I could have heard today was at the session I went to on the Truman Shuffle.  I brought up our idea of creating a “Student Guide to Truman State University” and putting it online, and this was met with a LOT of enthusiasm.  It actually sounded like a resource that faculty and staff would use as well to get questions answered.  Additionally, I feel like this would be a great way for Student Government to become more acquainted with staff offices on this campus.  Someone brought up the idea of making it interactive.  For example, if a question that someone needs answered isn’t posted in the handbook, then having someone investigate it and post the answer would be amazing.  I think this is definately something we could roll on in the coming future.

 The other session where something important happened that I went to was the session on the strength, breadth, and depth of Truman’s academic programs.  One of the big things that came up was that there is no data on the departmental websites for prospective students that show them how cool we are.  For example, no where will you find anything that says, “Truman has consistently placed at least one graduate at Mayo Clinic for the past ten years.”  or “76% of pre-med students from Truman State are accepted to medical school.”  This would greatly enhance our perception of our programs by prospective students.  Additionally, we discussed academic majors.  Do we need a separate actuarial science major?  Or do we simply need a Math major with an actuarial science focus?  Doug Davenport facilitated this session.  He mentioned (read, forcefully ordered) the participants to e-mail him with ideas that came up during this session so they don’t “get lost into the ether” as he put it.  I think this would be a great idea for us to follow up on.

 If other students had experiences or reactions to University Conference Day, it’d be great to post them here so we can compare notes.

~Greg Wisa
Senior Senator

Posted by Greg Wisa in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Storm the Capitol…or “That One Day It Was Really, Really Cold”

Henri Queuille, a noteable French Radical politician–with an utterly unpronouncable last name–once said of politics: “It is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.” 

Most people can figure out where their political allegiances lie: some believe that President Clinton’s policy of debt reduction was responsible for the boom of the 1990s, while others think that Reaganomics deserves the credit.  Many, many more don’t especially care who was responsible for the 8-year Dow Jones block party.  Politics, after all, isn’t everyone’s particular cup of tea, and there is something to be said for foregoing the cup of tea on certain occasions: at social events, during family dinner, or, most of interest to this posting, on 14-degree, blizzard-like mornings when you’d much rather stay in bed.

Last Wednesday, February 6th, however, 8 intrepid Truman adventurers threw off their warm blankets and slogged through the gusting snow at the happy hour of 6am to reach their home for the day: a charter bus parked illegally in Circle Drive.  The bus and it’s driver, a genial man named Jon, were waiting to take the students to Jefferson City for a day of lobbying State Senators and Representatives, an annual event known as “Storm the Capitol.”  On the day’s agenda were 2 main issues: reducing textbook costs and securing a vote for Truman’s Student Representative to the Board of Governors.

Bagels, however, took immediate priority once the trip went underway, understandable as, at 6:30 in the morning, making a decision between spreading low-fat or regular strawberry cream cheese on your blueberry-infused pastry requires a great deal of thought.  Breakfast was followed shortly thereafter by a rousing hour-long game of politically-incorrect Catchphrase, which saw “Team: Better Than You” beat “Team: Estrogen” just as the bus rolled into JC.  Once again, Jon found a suitable space to illegally park the bus, and the day was underfoot.

Throughout the course of the day, the 8 students and their “advisor-for-a-day,” Sujit Chembukkar, met with 21 Senators, Representatives, and representatives of the Representatives, discussing why, exactly, they were bringing forward these issues.  Most legislators had heard about the Student Vote on the BOG issue one too many times: the current Senate Bill 873, which would give the Student Representative a vote is, approximately, the 279,435th incarnation of such legislation.  To give some background, currently the University is governed by a Board of 10 members, 3 of whom are non-voting.  The student representative is one of these three members, though from a student perspective the fact that they represent the source of 31.2% of University funding should allow them to have a vote in decisions made regarding the usage and oversight of those funds.  Most legislators don’t share this view: from one’s perspective, a student needs to be “at least 50 years old” before they can expect and appreciate such a privilege.

Most Senators and Representatives the students visited with had not heard of Textbook Transparency, however, and this proved to be the most exciting topic discussed.  Textbook Transparency laws require publishing companies to make available the price, history of revisions, and information about the availability and pricing of any alternative or supplemental material to prospective buyers when pitching a sale.  It also requires “bundled” items, such as several books in one packet, to be made available “unbundled,” and also directs that–where technologically possible–”an approved public institution of higher education” will allow students to use any undisbursed financial aid to buy these books in their bookstores.  Just 3 states so far have passed Textbook Transparency legislation (Washington, California and Connecticut), but if all the political planets align Missouri will join their ranks this year: the Missouri Textbook Transparency Bill, House Bill 2048, was introduced into legislation shortly after Truman students lobbied for its creation in Jeff City.

If Henri Queuille was right about politics, a decision about this may come soon: this issue will continue to be relevant for as long as there are students, and especially for as long as there are students willing to speak up.  Many thanks go out to those dedicated individuals who made this event and this legislation possible; there is now a big, beautiful bill on Capitol Hill that, rumor has it, is apparently the new “it” thing for Representatives to get their names on.  Cheers!

EA

Posted by External Affairs in External Affairs | 3 Comments »

Collegiate Readership Program Change

Starting Monday, February 18, the Collegiate Readership Program will include the Kansas City Star. It has long been a goal of Senate to seek a fourth paper as well as various ways to expand and strengthen the program. After about a semester or more of negotiating, the Star will be available for Truman State Students. The paper will be delivered to the 8 non-card reader locations on campus. Currently, it isn’t possible to make changes to the 2 card reader locations to accommodate the Star. There are not expected to be any material costs associated with this change.

So as of Monday morning look for the Kansas City Star along with the three papers currently available in the program!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them.

Posted by Treasurer in Collegiate Readership Program | 2 Comments »