Frosh gives volleyball team a bump
mini dorms: intrusive or ingenious? PERSPECTIVES — 4
SPORTS — 6
Daily Wildcat
Thursday, september 22, 2011
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serving the university of arizona since 1899
Michael Drake, head of LPL, dies at age 65 By Brenna Goth Daily Wildcat
Photo illustration by juni nelson
WRITE OR WRONG
Cheating detection software may allow students to escape scrutiny By Brenna Goth Daily Wildcat
A website allowing students to check their work for plagiarism aims to help them avoid accidental violations — but it could enable others to cheat. WriteCheck.com, run by the same company as Turnitin.com, is marketed as a plagiarism detection tool for students. The service checks essays and papers for plagiarism as well as grammar, style and spelling errors. Users create an account and can check one paper for about $7. Results from WriteCheck highlight the material found in the turnitin.com database. Users can tweak their papers and resubmit them up to three times. WriteCheck advertises its ability to prevent students from being caught for accidental plagiarism. However, the site raises
the concern of whether it can be used to enable undetectable cheating by allowing students to check which sources are caught in the Turnitin database. The service goes against the spirit of the Code of Academic Integrity if used to doctor essays until plagiarism passes through Turnitin unnoticed, said Owen Davis, a professor of geology who uses Turnitin in his natural science general education course. “It may not violate the letter of the law,” Davis said. “But it certainly bypasses the spirit of the exercise.” Professor use of Turnitin has grown since the service came to campus nearly a decade a go, said Wayne Brent, senior consultant for emerging technology for the Office of Instruction and Assessment. Usage grew especially quickly last year after the service was integrated into D2L, Brent said. Brent offers administrative support to professors using Turnitin. “They can use it more quickly and transparently,” he said. Nearly half of professors in the College of Science use Turnitin for research papers
and lab reports, said Tom Fleming, an associate astronomer in the Department of Astronomy who coordinates Turnitin for the College of Science. Fleming said he catches about three incidents of plagiarism each semester in his courses. Most students plagiarize due to time constraints or because they thought they could get away with it, Fleming said. Cases of accidental plagiarism should be addressed in how students are taught to read, digest and rewrite information, he said. “The student should know whether they wrote it or not,” he said. Those who are caught plagiarizing fail the course, Fleming said. He said he opted not to enable the Turnitin feature allowing students to see the plagiarism report. “Then you’re allowing students to gain access to the system if they want to cheat,” Fleming said. Anastasia Freyermuth, a junior studying gender and women studies and film
Daily Wildcat
The Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law, or PPEL, major grew by 78 students over three semesters, which some PPEL students say is due to the variety of courses offered and the distinguished instructors. The UA began offering the major in fall 2010 after faculty in the philosophy, economics and government and public policy departments wanted to start a PPEL program, according to Laura Howard, the PPEL academic adviser and a philosophy instructor. Howard said the inspiration behind starting the major was the number of students who were interested in all of these subject areas, and that students had a hard time finding a major where all of these subjects overlapped. A student can declare the PPEL major at any time, but declared PPEL majors must complete four “foundation” or prerequisite courses in economics, philoso-
phy and political science before moving up to to “core” courses, which are for PPEL majors only. Brenna Keene, a PPEL junior, said she first heard about the major after seeing a poster about it in Slonaker House and thought it sounded “really interesting” and could be something she would “love to study.” “Every day I feel like I’m learning something that applies to life,” she said. “I love it. The professors are fantastic and really down to earth.” As a freshman, Keene came into the UA as a biology major, then switched to public administration before declaring PPEL. Although she said being unsure about what she wants to do with a PPEL degree gave her reservations about switching, she is interested in what she’s studying. “Something good will definitely come from this,” Keene said. “A lot of it has to do with the work and effort I’m willing
Janice Biancavilla/ Daily Wildcat
Beth Krumbein, a PPEL junior, said the major connects her interests.
to put in.” The major also allows students to pick different “tracks” in pre-law, international and global perspectives, environmental issues, moral, economic, and political values as well as policy studies. Within the tracks are different classes for students to choose from.
UA launches leadership association Offshoot of Leadership Programs will supplement existing offerings By Samantha Munsey Daily Wildcat
Beth Krumbein, a PPEL junior, said she has been a business and political science major and then wanted to become a philosophy major. The PPEL major “tied it all together,” she said. “It encompasses everything I was interested in,” she said. “You know a lot of people in your classes, we have study groups all the time. It’s great.” Krumbein said she was attracted to the major for a variety of reasons: an eclectic group of students, talented professors and that in her 12-unit track, her honors thesis counts as six of those credits. Once graduated, she said she plans to go to law school. The major can prepare students for law school because of the analytical work it offers and the education in politics and government, according to Howard. She said PPEL graduates can work in government relations, corporate relations, government
UA students interested in leadership opportunities can now get connected with other student leaders across the country. The UA’s Leadership Programs launched the newest component to its services, the National Collegiate Leadership Association, earlier this month. The new association is an addition to the National Collegiate Leadership Conference the UA hosts every spring semester where students from all over the U.S. come to campus to learn about leadership skills and practices. The association provides students the chance to gain that same experience throughout the year online and any time throughout the day. “In our strategic planning for the conference we started to see a need for leadership development on a national level,” said Thomas Murray, senior coordinator for the Leadership Programs and National Collegiate Leadership Association. “We started the program so that any student from anywhere can sign up for it and engage in leadership development regardless of their time commitment and finances because we offer it at a very low cost.” For a fee of $15 per year, students can sign up for the program through the association’s website and gain access to online workshops, networking options, building an e-portfolio, and joining monthly webinars hosted by professors and experts in the field of leadership. The first webinar will be hosted by Murray today at 5 p.m. on the association website where he will discuss the development of group dynamics and how to negotiate conflicts. “It’s kind of like having the National College Leadership Conference year-round,” said Janae Phillips, who is a student assistant to the program and a family studies and human development junior. “Because it is like having that weekend during the conference where you meet everyone and exchange ideas. It’s an extension of that, but it happens all year instead of just that one weekend.” Though the site only began taking users on Sept. 1, the association is already signing up members in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Washington, and is in negotiations with other universities to include whole classes and groups in the association.
ppel, 3
LEADERSHIP, 3
CHECK, 3
New major sees major growth By Eliza Molk
Michael Drake, director of the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, died on Wednesday at the University of Arizona Medical Center — University Campus. The cause of his death has not yet been disclosed Drake, 65, came to the UA in 1973 and began serving as the director of the laboratory and head of the Department of Planetary Sciences in 1994. Drake was also the principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, which is set to launch in 2016 and return with asteroid samples in 2023. The money secured for the UA’s role in the project is the largest grant the Michael Drake Director of the UA university has ever received. As head of the Lunar and Lunar and PlanPlanetary Laboratory, Drake etary Laboratory oversaw a series of high-profile projects at the laboratory, including the HiRISE camera on the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Cassini image mission in orbit around Saturn and the Phoenix Mars Lander project.
College of Medicine gets $2.2M to promote diversity By Alexandra Bortnik Daily Wildcat
The UA College of Medicine Office of Outreach and Multicultural Affairs has been awarded a $2.2 million grant to increase opportunities for educationally and economically disadvantaged individuals who are interested in a variety of health related professions. The Health Careers Opportunity Program grant was awarded to the office by the Health Resources and Services Administration. The UA was selected based on its review committee score and its qualification for a funding preference for proposing a “comprehensive approach,” said Elizabeth Senerchia, public affairs specialist at the Department of Health
“If we look at the data there are so many benefits to having a diverse workforce in order to best meet the increasing diverse population in our country.” — Dr. Ana Maria Lopez, professor of medicine and pathology
and Human Services. Dr. Ana Maria Lopez, a professor of medicine and pathology and the principal investigator for the grant, said that diversity, in terms of the grant, is a broad term encapsulating not just people from racial or ethnic
minority backgrounds, but first-generation students and geographically diverse students. “If we look at the data there are so many benefits to having a diverse workforce in order to best meet the increasing diverse population in our country,” she said. Lopez also said she particularly likes the name of the grant because it represents the program’s main goal for students. The grant will provide students and parents with financial planning resources and information about health care careers and training. The program will also give students the opportunity to receive mentoring services and expose them to communitybased primary health care experiences
with public and private non-profit providers, according to Senerchia. “I think often times when people go to talk to a health adviser, people walk away and feel limitations,” Lopez said. “And we’d like for to the students to walk away feeling that there are opportunities and to be able to reach the students early enough where they can really mastermind those opportunities and maximize their chances on really realizing their hopes and dreams.” The Health Careers Opportunity Program has programs that target middle school, high school and college-level students with the goal that eventually higher-level students will be able to serve as mentors to younger students. Students are also
becoming increasingly more tech savvy, said Lopez, so it’s helpful for the program to maximize its online resources and be accessible to students wherever they are. The program can make health care more accessible to those populations and reduce health disparities by encouraging students from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter various health professions training programs, according to Senerchia. “Our state and country is in the midst of tremendous health care shortages and to become a health professional takes a long time … shortages are so acute and in some parts of our state people are very underserved,” Lopez said.