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Tuesday, October ,
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SERVING THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA SINCE 1899
Sony president, CEO visits UA By Brenna Goth
Sony activities will take place throughout the week.
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Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America , is visiting campus this week. He will meet with administrators from various colleges and give an address as part of the Eller College of Management Distinguished Speaker Series. Tretton, the father of a UA undergraduate, contacted the university a few months ago to ask if he could be of any assistance, said Nancy Smith, director of Corporate and Business Relations. Opportunities are still in development, but the UA is now a “preferred recruiting institution” for internships, Smith said.
Jack Tretton Sony president and CEO
Daily Wildcat: As a UA parent, what do you think of the university and has that influenced your decision to
reach out? Jack Tretton: One of the things that impressed me so much was the tradition. The school is actually older than the state, and you can feel that. There is tradition in everything it does. The school takes
education so seriously and that was very important to me, not only in the undergraduate but the graduate programs. The rest of the world would be extremely impressed if they knew as much about the university as I do. What does it mean for the UA to be a “preferred recruiting institution”? I think I’ve personally spent more time at UA than any other college since I’ve been in college myself. I’m a fan of the university and everything it represents. Familiarity breeds interest. I’ve seen what a great institution it is. In just the two short years we’ve had our internship
program, we’ve had a UA student in the program. It’s a great opportunity for me and my company in particular to have a relationship with such a fine institution. Are you trying to strengthen that relationship or make it more formal with your visit? I think this is really the first formal relationship. I’ve kind of been informally involved since my son enrolled three years ago. This is the first formal connection with the university and I hope it’s something that strengthens over time. Does Sony have any other relationships with universities at
BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE
this point? Nothing official. We’re starting to build those more, and want to do more college outreach, but unfortunately, finding time is difficult. Arizona is the first. It may not be the last, but Arizona is the flagship in term of close relationships. What’s changed in the gaming industry since you started working in it more than 20 years ago? The industry probably evolves and moves at a quicker pace, in my opinion, than any industry out there. It reinvents itself every year and there are always new challenges.
SONY, 2
Grant will fund study of climate, fire danger By Kyle Mittan DAILY WILDCAT
tools at the faculty’s disposal, and that this “suite” of products may take longer to get fully functional. “We’re going to get more, and we need to be able to support more,” she said. Andy Silverman, a former clinical professor of law, raised concerns over Arizona State University’s partnership with the
A $1.5 million grant will allow UA researchers to study how human behavior and climate impact wildfires, given the historic fire season that affected some UA students this summer. Thomas Swetnam, director of the UA’s Laboratory of TreeRing Research, is the lead investigator on the National Science Foundation grant, and will spearhead the group of researchers from many different departments, including fire ecology, archaeology, anthropology, education and outreach. The team’s overall goal is to determine how humans affect the severity of wildfires in the Southwest. This question will be answered by combining various means of research, including communicating with four Native American tribes throughout Arizona and New Mexico, and also by researching how the wildfires are fueled by forest components. Swetnam was unable to be contacted for comment as of press time. T.J. Ferguson, a professor in the School of Anthropology and the grant’s co-principal investigator, will examine the cultural use of fire in several tribes in Arizona and New Mexico. “I’ve been working with three of the four tribes for more than twenty years on a whole series of projects,” Ferguson said. “So it was a real honor for me to be invited to work with this team of scientists who are studying a topic so timely.” Ferguson is currently in New Mexico meeting with members of the Pueblo of Zuni and Pueblo of Jemez Native American tribes, where he is trying to better understand how they have affected the behaviors of wildfires in the region, coupled with droughts and other dry conditions. Much of Ferguson’s portion of the project will include mapping the settlement locations of the tribes and comparing them to maps of fires, and then studying the consistencies. Sara Chavarria, the outreach director in the College of Education , is responsible for making the team’s research accessible to students in high
FACULTY SENATE, 2
WILDFIRES, 2
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Mark Candee, assistant curator for the Flandrau Science Center, shows one of the displays at the exhibit “It’s a Gas! The bright side of science.” This particular display demonstrates the different colors given off by certain gases and spotlights some of the research being done at the UA. For more photos from the exhibit, check out dailywildcat.com.
IT migration fails to connect Faculty Senate raises concerns over ongoing data service switch By Luke Money DAILY WILDCAT
In Provost Jacqueline Mok’s first Faculty Senate meeting as the UA’s chief academic officer on Monday, scholastic issues took a backseat to information technology issues and the goings-on at ASU. The senate heard a presentation from Michele Norin, the UA’s chief information officer, about the UA Connect project. The project is an ongoing effort to modernize the university’s email and calendar environment. Norin said the overall goal of the project is to make the UA’s information offerings more reliable, but acknowledged that the array of different types of machines used by faculty and staff, particularly older machines, had become a mitigating factor in the process. “We underestimated the effort it (the migration) would take,” she said. Derek Masseth, senior direc-
tor of infrastructure services for University Information and Technology Services, said one of the techniques to make the university’s information offerings more integrated and efficient was a shift to BPOS, a messaging and collaboration platform operated by Microsoft that the UA uses at a cost of $500,000 a year. Masseth acknowledged there had been “a lot of challenges” with the migration, but that the 8,000 or so who were already using the service were having a “wonderful experience.” Wanda Howell, the chair of the Faculty Senate, asked why the migration had to be mandatory. Masseth responded that it was based on the per-user cost and flexibility the service provided. Norin did say that the migration did not exclude departments or colleges from using their own, internal systems, but that those determinations have to be made with the approval of the IT team. John Ulreich, an English professor, expressed a common complaint that the migration had interrupted regularly reliable service. “For me, the system was work-
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Jacqueline Mok, UA provost and president’s chief of staff, speaks at Monday’s Faculty Senate meeting. The meeting took place at the James E. Rogers College of Law.
ing, and you had to fix it and now it doesn’t work,” Ulreich said. “At my age, this is irritating.” Ralph Renger, a public health professor, asked why a migration was necessary when many faculty members had no problems with the old system. “We need a one-page talking point about why we are moving,” Renger said. Norin said it is important to understand that there are more
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