FAMILY WEEKEND 2015
Welcome to EASTERN, Families! THE
D aily E astern N ews
Friday, October 9, 2015 “TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID” C E L E BRATI NG A CE NTUR Y OF COV E RA GE 19 15- 201 5
VOL. 100 | NO. 35 W W W . D A I L YE A S TE R N N E W S . C O M
Fire, police departments respond to stove fire By Roberto Hodge News Editor | @DEN_News A stove fire occurred at 9:10 p.m. Thursday in apartment 24 in the Elliott Building of University Court. Charleston Fire and Police departments both responded. Steve Bennett, the assistant fire chief of the Charleston Fire Department, said the stove range and hood sustained minimal fire damage. Nothing else in the building was damaged and no injuries were reported. Bennett said the fire was extinguished before the sprinkler systems were activated; he said how quickly the building service workers clean the kitchen area would determine if the residents could return to their apartment Thursday evening.
Roberto Hodge may be reached at 581-2812 or rlhodge@eiu.edu.
JOSH SAX TON | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
The Charleston Fire Department responds to a stove fire at 9:10 p.m on Thursday in apartment 24 of the Elliott Building in University Court. Fire officials said that the fire was extinguished before the sprinkler system was activated and there was minimal damage.
Local sites Eastern to offer entertainment for visitors open for visiting families Staff Report | @DEN_News
Eastern welcomes all relatives as they kick off Family Weekend with a comedy juggler, discount food court prices, movie showings and Bingo Friday night. Saturday happenings start early as the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union will pro-
vide a “Parent’s Club Continental Breakfast,” which is a complimentary breakfast bar beginning at 9 a.m. Panther football hosts Southeast Missouri State at 1 p.m. Saturday at O’Brien Field. There will be activities for all members of the family leading up to the game including a lunch at Stevenson Tower and “Billy’s Backyard, The
EIU Tailgate.” Family Weekend Funfest begins at 7 p.m. in the Union, with ventriloquist Mark Rubben, a “Thinkfast” game show and hypnotist Erick Kand highlighting the evening. More details and information can be found starting on page 1B of the On the Verge of Family Weekend issue.
CAA approves systems course revisions
By Lynnsey Veach Staff Reporter | @DEN_News
Eastern students can venture off campus while they have their families visiting this weekend to discover there is plenty to do in Charleston if they know where to look. A 10-minute walk from Old Main will take visitors down tree-lined streets and past Victorian architecture to the downtown square. The square and the adjacent area features local businesses including Bob’s Bookstore and Jackson Avenue Coffee, both of which offer open mic night on Fridays. The Charleston area also offers many historical attractions, including five related to 16th President Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln’s father and stepmother lived in the Charleston area while their son was practicing law in Springfield. The Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, located at 402 South Lincoln Highway Road, is eight miles south of Charleston and gives visitors the opportunity to see “an accurate reproduction of the Lincolns’ two-room cabin that was reconstructed on the original cabin site,” according to the website. One mile north of Lincoln Log Cabin visitors can also discover the Moore Home State Museum, where Lincoln last visited his family in 1861 prior to leaving for Washington D.C. to become president. Just west of Lincoln Log Cabin is the historic Thomas Lincoln Cemetery, which contains gravesites of Lincoln’s father and stepmother, as well as Civil War veterans.
LOCAL, page 6
By Cassie Buchman Administration Editor |@cjbuchman The Council on Academic Affairs approved revisions to a class in management information systems and heard from Kurt Olausen, the director of study abroad, about classes at its meeting. Larry White, an assistant chair of management information systems/operations management and member of the CAA, spoke at the meeting on behalf of MIS 4850, the class being revised. White said it is an existing course that will be revised and offered online in the future. “It is a precursor to a new program that is also coming along in the graduate level,” White said. The class is a Master of Science in Cybersecurity. The class revision was unanimously approved. Olausen was originally asked to the CAA about the course approval in 2012 but he did not hear about this until last week due to staff turnovers in the study abroad office. He brought items that talked about the course approval process for the CAA to look at. The CAA asked for a summary of the learning objectives for the course and the overall content. Rebecca Throneburg, a professor in communication disorders and sciences, said one thing that sent a red flag to the CAA a few years ago was that some of the faculty-led study abroad courses do not go through the CAA. She said they had a conversation with the previous study abroad director. “The concern at that point was that it appeared that the same study abroad experience
“I think often times we may not have a firm outline of the graduate (program).” -Kurt Olausen, director of study abroad was getting counted very differently with a wide variety of substitutions when they got back,” Throneburg said. “So we were saying we would like to see how a person who’s getting credit for a 1000 level gen ed versus a 3000 level major course.” The CAA asked for a report from study abroad so they could understand the reasoning behind giving different amounts of credit for what seemed like the same experience. Olausen said because he is not necessarily well-versed about what goes on in each department, study abroad sometimes needs department chairs to decide certain things. “On some level, we do have to rely on department chairs to say, yes this meets our academic standards,” Olausen said. Throneburg said they needed to check for consistency in the classes, in undergraduate and graduate programs. Olausen said part of his concern is getting more people in the study abroad program in the first place, so the program can run. “I think often times we may not have a firm outline of the graduate (program),” Olausen said. “The graduate thing is ‘well, we don’t expect
any, so when we do we’ll make something up. My goal is to just get them abroad.” Throneburg said any other classes coming from the department would go to the department curriculum committee. “It doesn’t go to our department curriculum committee,” she said. “Basically somebody who wasn’t involved with in the curriculum at all put this together.” Olausen said it is easy for study abroad to ask for more specific information about certain courses from the people who knew about them. “We send questions back about things,” Olausen said. The study abroad program has grown from previous years. “This year for the first time there are two sections of 31 students,” Olausen said. Debra Reid, a history professor, asked Olausen if the course was working as proposed or if he saw things that needed changing. Olausen said he has made tweaks to how an assignment is done but other than that he has not seen a lot of flexibility. “The biggest changes I’ve made is I’ve dropped enrollment on a course 25 to 16,” he said. JaLisa Smith, a psychology major, said the study abroad course was working, and that it was different from other classes. “We’ve already been there instead of just talking about going there,” Smith said. “It’s kind of a big self reflection, applying the global aspects to us as people.” Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or cjbuchman@eiu.edu.