BOOTED IN BOZEMAN Football loses to Montana State, but gains experience
SPORTS: PAGE 12
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS PART OF THE LANDSCAPE The Portland Art Museum celebrates Lee Kelly’s works in progress
ARTS: PAGE 9
INDEX NEWS OPINION ARTS SPORTS
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Middle East Studies receives federal grant
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Senate says students should pay less for CPSO
$1.6 million to be used for scholarships, resource materials and new staff SIERRA PANNABECKER VANGUARD STAFF
This fall, Portland State will be one of 20 schools nationwide to be designated as a National Resource Center for Middle East studies. The accompanying $1.6 million federal grant will expand the Middle East Studies Center and make possible the appointment of three new professors, provide Foreign Language and Area Studies [FLAS] fellowships to undergraduate students and enhance resources for K–12 teachers statewide. Part of Title VI of the Higher Education Act, the four-year grant is awarded to universities with outstanding international studies programs distinguished by public outreach and relevant curriculum. The accompanying FLAS scholarships are meant to encourage students to study languages that are not commonly taught but are becoming increasingly important in global economics and politics, according to James Grehan, an assistant professor of history at PSU. PSU’s MESC currently provides educational resources to both students in the International Studies programs and teachers in the greater Portland area. With the additional grant money, the MESC will be able to expand its own resource library, purchase subscriptions
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Funding campus security: Clockwise from left—Senators Adam Rahmlow, Donovan Powell, Josh Hyrks, John Monett and Victoria Leca discuss the funding of CPSO by student fees.
Student Senate challenges allocation of student fees to CPSO ALISON BARNWELL VANGUARD STAFF
T
he funds that support Portland State’s Campus Public Safety Office are drawn from a variety of sources, including student fees. In funding Smith Memorial Student Union, which in turn funds CPSO, the Student Fee Committee [SFC] essentially provides for 16 percent of
the department’s budget. The Senate Finance Committee is contesting this figure, arguing that student fees should not entirely cover security at a building that is used by both the university and its students. As CPSO works with the SFC to change the process of its budget review, the Senate Finance Committee is presenting a resolution to the Senate that challenges the allocation of student fees in the CPSO budget. Every year, SMSU submits a CPSO budget to the SFC. With this year’s review process fast approaching—budget input begins on Nov. 22—members of CPSO and the SFC are
talking about handing the task of generating the CPSO budget to CPSO itself. Traditionally, CPSO bills SMSU for its services; in turn, SMSU presents a CPSO budget to the SFC. Krystine McCants, the SFC chair, said that the result of the system change would be that the SFC, not the billed party, would be responsible for justifying the CPSO budget. Mark Russell, the head of SMSU, supports the change. “I think it’s appropriate...[the SFC] can better understand the budget,” Russell said. “I can’t defend and understand the amounts as well as they can.”
PSU tests Blackboard replacement D2L receives positive feedback, will be fully implemented by spring ERICK BENGEL VANGUARD STAFF
Blackboard’s days are numbered. By the end of this academic year, Portland State’s online learning management system will be replaced
by the new Desire2Learn [D2L] system. According to Mark Jenkins, associate vice provost of Online Learning Services, Blackboard has become an obsolete system and will be phased out term-byterm as D2L is phased in. For fall term, the implementation team, led by Jenkins, is currently holding a “pilot program.” This consists of 60 to 70 of PSU’s partially or fully online courses being taught by faculty who vol-
unteered to experiment with D2L and offer feedback on the system. The rest of PSU’s online courses, however, are still using Blackboard. Come winter term, all university courses that are either partially or fully online will be taught through D2L, while inclass courses for which professors use learning management systems only as a supplementary tool—by posting assignments and syllabi, for instance—will continue to use Blackboard.
However, by spring term, PSU’s transition to D2L is expected to be complete. Blackboard, as well as Course Studio, will officially be taken offline, and all courses that require a learning management system will be hosted by D2L. “Spring is the target term to have everybody onto the new system,” said Ellen Weeks, PSU’s project manager for D2L. The need to replace Black-
CPSO is paid for by a combination of student fees and money from the Education and General Fund, which is a mix of tuition dollars and state support. Student fees are part of the equation because CPSO provides services to SMSU. However, Senate Finance Committee Chair Adam Rahmlow argues that student fees should not fund 16 percent of the police presence at SMSU because university offices are spread throughout the building. In addition, student groups host only 35 percent of events that take place at SMSU. Rahmlow is writing a resolution that he’ll present to the
Student Senate this evening. If the Senate votes in favor of his draft, he’ll take it to the SFC. “It’s disturbing that students pay the whole Smith Union [CPSO] budget, when student use of the building is only 35 percent, and Smith is only one of more than 55 buildings on campus,” Rahmlow said. “It gives the university back-door access to student fee money, in my opinion.” Primarily, his resolution will dispute the fact that SMSU accounts for 16 percent of the university’s total CPSO budget.
board with a superior system has been evident almost since PSU adopted Blackboard in spring 2008. The regularity of complaints against Blackboard’s user-unfriendliness has made the system rather unpopular among PSU faculty, student users and Office of Information Technologies staff, according to Weeks. “Blackboard has been an increasingly unstable product,” she said. “It is pretty universally not well-received.” Weeks said that when students log into Blackboard, whether it is to work on course assignments or to upload files, they often discover that the
“system just quits” and “has to be reset by our developers here at Portland State.” Even more problematic, these sudden shutdowns have occurred while entire classrooms are taking online quizzes. Karla Fant, senior instructor of the computer science department, said that Blackboard tends to frustrate students. “It is difficult at times to log in; strange pop-up menus arrive at the desktop periodically, and only one window can be open, [which] is a problem when working with multiple courses in Blackboard,” Fant said.
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D2L ON PAGE 3