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(12/05/12 4:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>According to a new study for IU-based National Survey of Student Engagement, professors aren’t happy with the amount of time that students put into studying for their classes. But, according to the same study, students spend much more time preparing for classes than their teachers think they do. The study, conducted among 285,000 freshmen and seniors at 546 four-year colleges, found there is a marginal difference in the amount of studying that teachers believe students do and the amount they actually do. Students studying the professional field, such as nursing, architecture and other health sciences, say they study about 17.6 hours a week preparing for class, while professors believe they only spend 15.9 hours preparing. Also, men typically spend less time studying than women.Students earning A’s, on average spend four hours or more than those earning lower grades.“I study about three to four hours a day,” sophomore Aviva Taeidkashani said. “That means I probably spend about twenty to thirty hours a week studying.”Junior Jason Abramsohn said he can spend 20 hours or more in the library a week.With finals coming up, students such as freshman Alexa Paige think about where they want to study. For Paige, sitting at her desk while listening to her iPod is the best location. Other students prefer to study in a public area. “I study best in a place where others are studying,” sophomore Leslie Theisen said. “In a place where it isn’t too quiet.”
(11/15/12 3:43am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Turning off lights, cutting showers short and unplugging unused appliances are just a few of the small ways students conserved energy and water during the fall 2012 Energy Challenge. The challenge, which started Oct. 22 and ended Monday, is sponsored by the IU Office of Sustainability and Residential Programs and Services. Students and University employees across the academic buildings, greek houses, residence buildings, campus apartments and academic houses saved more than 6 million gallons of water and more than 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity, according to energychallenge.indiana.edu. “The goal of Energy Challenge is to raise awareness of energy and water consumption among building occupants,” said Bill Brown, director of sustainability. “Give them techniques to conserve, and teach new conservation behavior that will persist.”Meters in every building measured the amount of energy used during the challenge, and the meters were checked each week to give a composite score. For the first time since the energy challenge started in 2007, every building on campus was invited to participate. “It has evolved to become one of the largest competitions of its kind on a single campus, with over 82 buildings with approximately 18,000 occupants,” Brown said. Buildings were split into six categories: large academic buildings, academic houses, greek Panhellenic houses, greek Interfraternity houses, apartment housing and residence halls. The winners were buildings in each category that reduced water and energy usage by the largest percent.The SRSC Recreational Sports building won among all large academic buildings, and Military Science won in the category of academic houses.In the greek community, Alpha Chi Omega and Sigma Alpha Mu reduced their water and energy usage by the greatest percentage among Panhellenic and Interfraternity houses, respectively.Campus View won among on-campus apartment facilities, and Forest Quad was the residence hall that reduced its usage by the greatestpercentage.Trophies were awarded Wednesday night in the Neal-Marshall Education Center.
(11/07/12 1:40am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>While most 13-year-olds were worried about their eighth-grade homework, sophomoreAudra Kriauciunas was writing a novel. Now, she’s at it again. Kriauciunas’ first book, “Crown of Dreams,” is about shy teenager Riley Halterfield who is pushed to enter beauty pageants by her two best friends. She finds herself in the spotlight, a place she fears, and all eyes are on her as she prepares to strut her stuff. During the competition, Riley is separated from her friends and is surprised to find a source of comfort in a new friend, Rachel, who is determined to win before cancer claims her life.The book follows the relationship of the fellow competitors. “I was in eighth grade when I wrote ‘Crown of Dreams,’ so much of my writing took place during class time when I finished my assignments early ,” Kriauciunas said. “So, it took around a year to complete the draft.”Once the story was finished, Kriauciunas spent her freshman year of high school editing it in preparation to send it to the publishers. During her sophomore year of high school, she submitted the book to Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC, a company that specializes in working with first-time authors. The book was published by the time she was 16.The second book in the series, “Song of Hope,” picks up where “Crown of Dreams” left off. Riley is entered in a singing competition she has dreamed of winning her whole life. She must discover what it means to live with hope and happiness amid tragedy.This book introduces two new characters: Ellie and her attractive brother, Sean. “‘Song of Hope’ took me two summers to write, and I wrote it when I was a freshman in college and finished the manuscript and editing the summer before I started my sophomore year of college,” Kriauciunas said.Kriauciunas said her books aren’t based on real-life events, but she does use real-life experiences to develop the story and draws inspiration from books of the same genre. “My sophomore year of college, I found out my father had colon cancer,” she said. “Though he is doing well, I was able to develop Riley’s character more with my own experiences of knowing someone I loved with cancer.”Though her first book is now published, Kriauciunas said she is still far from being famous. “As it turns out, there is a lot more to publishing a book than just writing it, submitting it to the publisher and then being done with the process,” she said. “That is just the beginning of the process. Writing a book means you also have to market it, which is something that I don’t have a lot of knowledge or talent in.”Her second book is not yet published, but “Crown of Dreams” can be purchased online at tatepublishing.com. It is not yet in stores. Kriauciunas said she won’t let that get in the way of her dreams.“Seeing a book with my name on it has been a dream of mine since I was really young,” she said. “I was an avid reader and loved walking into book stores and seeing all the books on display, hoping one day a book with my name would be among them, and even though ‘Crown of Dreams’ has not yet made it onto the shelves of bookstores, I know it is only a matter of time.”
(11/05/12 4:47am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A group of men sat around a drum, eyes closed, chanting to a rhythm. They sang carefully in time to the beat of the drum, but they knew the songs by heart. The songs had been passed down through generations, as had the dances performed around the drummers. In a swirl of color and regalia, the Second Annual Traditional Powwow took place Saturday and Sunday in Union Street Center. There were tables for vendors and a room where Native Americans celebrated their heritage in song and dance. The powwow, put on by the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center, the Native American Graduate Student Association and the American Indian Association, with help from the IU Student Association, drew people from across the country. Vendor Morning Lark Baskett sold traditional clothing at her table. “I live close and got involved with the Indian Center here,” she said. “We come up for craft night. Today, I expect to sell some stuff and see some friends from out of town. I have friends coming from quite a distance.”The gathering began with a traditional gourd dance led by IU anthropology professor Brian Gilley. During the dance, there was a dedication to Virginia Jessie Osborne, who was being honored as an elder. “My mom just recently came to be here with me in Indiana,” said LaDonna Jessie Blue Eye, Osborne’s daughter and a doctoral student at IU. “Three years ago the doctor told her that she had bone, liver and breast cancer and that she only had six to eight weeks. And today, the young Native American students wanted to honor her with a shawl that has pink ribbons on it.”After the gourd dance, a community lunch was served to all attending as the dancers prepared for intertribal dancing. The grand entrance of traditional dancing came next. Men and women entered the room in full traditional clothing, dancing to the drumming groups that had traveled far to take part in the ceremony. The dancing went on for hours, led by Gilbert Brown of Iowa and Cheryl McClellan of Oklahoma. It was a chance for the different nations to show their dances. “Every nation has a different style of dance,” emcee Terry Fiddler said as visiting Sac & Fox Nation Princess Lyndee McClellan demonstrated a dance from her nation. Also during the dancing, Beverly Calender-Anderson, director of Bloomington’s Safe and Civil City Program, brought a proclamation. She announced November is now Native American Indian Heritage month in Bloomington. “It’s congratulating IU on pulling together the powwow,” she said. “It celebrates the richness of culture and diversity the powwow adds.”
(10/31/12 3:08am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel has proposed the merger of the Department of the Communication and Culture, School of Journalism and Department of Telecommunications into one single unit. Robel organized a committee to design a plan of action that will effectively combine the programs to create a single school.School of Journalism Interim Dean Michael Evans said this isn’t about money. The school and two departments are all doing well on their own, he said, but together they could be much more notable. Other academics involved with the schools agreed. “The units aren’t deficient or downsizing,” communication and culture professor Gregg Waller said. “They’re going to become more valuable.” The committee members are Evans, Waller, telecommunications professor Julie Fox and Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Science John Lucaites.The four committee members are in charge of coming up with a plan that will be submitted to Robel later this year and ultimately decided upon by the Board of Trustees, Evans said. They have come up with two structures for merging the schools. The two existing plans exist simply to “generate discussion,” and aren’t official plans, Lucaites said. The first structure consists of five parts, according to the plan released by the Committee on Communication, Media and Journalism. It would bring in professors from not only inside the existing programs, but other programs as well, such as from the School of Informatics and Computing.The core departments would become more interconnected via a series of institutes designed to facilitate more research. Then, the new school would develop a series of new undergraduate degree programs to replace the current degrees that draw from all of the resources of the current units. The graduate education will continue to be based in departmental units. The new school will also call for relocation of all programs. The second structure is called the “starfish,” and consists of undergraduate and graduate education following different paths through specific legs of the “starfish,” all connected by the “heart” that encourages an adaptive infrastructure to promote all items related to media. Although these structures have been presented at the meetings, the committee made clear they are not proposals. This merger has become a debate between the committee and the students of all three programs. The final public meeting for undergraduate students took place Tuesday.Undergraduate students expressed opinions and ask questions about the merger. Will Mruzek, a senior in the Department of Communications and Culture, made his own structure based off of the committee’s. His plan mirrored theirs, but instead made a more linear graph of how the majors could be structured. “I think we need to modernize the School of Journalism,” said Haley Nelson, a junior journalism major. “We can put a greater focus on a wider range of education, especially dealing with web skills.”With the opinions of graduate and undergraduate students and faculty of the departments and school effected, the committee will create their plan and submit it by the end of the fall semester.
(10/30/12 3:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Printed in 1455, the Gutenberg Bibles are the oldest books in the Western world. There’s a copy of one of these rare Bibles available to students in the Lilly Library, which receives only 4,000 visitors each year. “The Lilly Library is the home to rare books, manuscripts and collections,” said Rebecca Baumann, reference associate at the Lilly Library. “The rarest and most expensive books come here.”The Lilly Library was built in 1960 to house the extensive collections of J.K. Lilly. At the time it was opened, it consisted of his 20,000 books and 17,000 manuscripts. Today, this collection has grown to include more than 400,000 books, 8.5 million pieces of manuscripts and many more pieces of history. Many of them are original and can’t be found elsewhere in the world, according to the Guide for the Lilly Library Documents.“The Lilly is good for anyone working on a project who needs a primary source,” Baumann said. “For example, you could check out the biography about Sylvia Plath that everyone reads, or you could come here and use something not everyone has, like her childhood drawings.”A collection of Sylvia Plath’s works and other items from throughout her life is one of the main displays available in the library right now as a parallel to the Plath symposium earlier this month. Not only is the Plath collection one of the most used in the library, it’s also one of the largest in the country, second only to the collection at Smith College in Massachusetts, Plath’s alma mater. The other major display currently available is the collection commemorating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, Baumann said. The collection consists of letters, battle plans and political cartoons. This collection has also been made available online as well, becoming the first exhibition to be both in the library and online. According to the Guide, all of the resources available at the library are open to everyone. “It’s completely open to the public, you don’t have to have any affiliation to be able to use the library,” Baumann said.
(10/03/12 2:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students wearing cream and crimson received free prizes Tuesday as a part of Homecoming Week. Homecoming Spirit Day tents were posted near Ballantine Hall, 10th Street and Fee Lane, the Arboretum and at the red clock outside the Neal-Marshall Education Center. Volunteers handed out free IU gear to passersby, such as cups, leis, T.I.S. coupons and Frisbees, said senior Kara Brooner, vice president of Homecoming Week. “It’s all to promote Homecoming Week and get people to wear red on campus,” she said. “It’s our goal to get as many people to wear red as possible.”The volunteers at the tents passed out the spoils of the day to the many students who showed up despite the weather. They tried to elevate the level of excitement for Homecoming with their cheers as they bounced from each student passing by to the next.Sophomore Kristine Marshall handed out gear with other Student Alumni Association members at the Ballantine location. “I like to go out to as many events as I can and show my school spirit,” she said.In addition to working stations set up around campus, volunteers drove around campus in golf carts to hand out more IU spirit wear and coupons to those not dressed in IU clothing. Although the stations around campus this year were new, the golf carts have been going for years, Brooner said. In all, about $1,000 worth of supplies were ordered, Director of Spirit Day Carlin Way said. “We’ve been handing out stuff, being energetic and promoting Homecoming,” he said.
(09/26/12 2:21am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When entering the Woodburn Hall classroom on Tuesday and Thursday nights, the scene isn’t too different from a normal class: a group of IU students sitting around a plain wooden table, and an instructor leading a discussion about the day’s reading. But it isn’t just a class.It’s part of a larger meditation, and the students are discussing the works of the Dalai Lama.The Buddhist Study Association has been having meditation instruction like these for the past 20 years. Until now, they have only been offered in Chinese. Starting this fall, the organization decided it was time to also offer the classes in English.“The Chinese classes were a language barrier,” class leader and freshman Sarabeth Couch said. “There weren’t previously resources to translate the readings, but because there’s been more interest, we were able to get more resources.”Because many Chinese characters don’t have direct English translations, the organization has previously been unable to translate readings.“It was difficult for even the Chinese students to understand the terms,” Couch said. “And it was even more challenging for them to translate it to English.”Now that Buddhism has become more popular with English speakers, Couch said, more authors have published about the subject, making it simpler to teach it to English speakers. More bilingual instructors are willing to help out. The English classes consist of guided meditation, prayers, readings and discussion for beginners. The class teaches Sunlun meditation, which is the traditional peaceful meditation. The class also includes Mahasi deep breathing meditation. Students who have participated in the class said the meditation has helped them in many different ways.“Meditation has given me much more awareness over my thoughts and actions,”said Andy Cooper,who attends the classes. “And through that awareness I have gained some understanding of myself and others.”The students who attend the classes aren’t all Buddhist, either. The classes, which started Sept. 11, are offered at 6 p.m. every Tuesday in Woodburn 006 and Thursday in Woodburn 118. For more information, contact Sarabeth Couch at slcouch@indiana.edu. For other English activities about Buddhism, students should contact the Asian Culture Center or check the schedule of events on ganden.org. Attendees need no prior knowledge of meditation to participate.“The only thing you need to bring is an open mind,” Couch said.