2015 Guide RENTER’S
Monday, Dec. 8, 2014 | Volume 210 | Number 70 | 40 cents | iowastatedaily.com | An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
Waiting was the hardest part... Six new testing centers, extended hours hope to descrease students’ time in lines ByVanessa.Franklin @iowastatedaily.com
I
n the past, waiting in long lines at testing centers during Finals Week was as much a right of passage at Iowa State
as kissing under the Campanile or singing “Sweet Caroline” at a football game. The Provost Office, in collaboration with the Government of the Student Body, the testing center staff and individual colleges, will open a total of eight test-
GILMAN HALL
College of Design
Testing center hours Dead week
N
• Friday - 8 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Parks Library
• Saturday - 12 p.m. – 6 p.m. • Sunday - 12 p.m. – 10 p.m.
SUKUP HALL
Finals week
DURHAM CENTER TESTING CENTER LOCATIONS Reference points
Beardshear Hall
CARVER HALL
ing centers with extended hours during Finals Week. Administrators expect between 13,000 and 18,000 tests to be administered next week. Opening new testing centers wasn’t a quick fix. The team tasked with coordinating the opening of the new centers also needed to make sure students were aware of the changes. “It’s not very often when you can see a problem and get people together relatively quickly and try and solve a problem,” said Rob Schweers, director of communi-
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HEADY HALL Curtiss Hall
cations for the office of the senior vice president and provost. “We can’t promise that there won’t be a single line ever at the testing centers over the course of this Finals Week, but we expect that they are going to be a lot better.” Four testing centers were opened last spring for finals, but, despite the effort, lines were still long. The number of seats has more than doubled for this fall, going from 219 to 448 seats. “In order for these changes to work we need students to help,”
• Mon. – Thurs. - 7:30 a.m. – 10 p.m. • Friday - 7:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.
said Jonathan Wickert, senior vice president and provost. “Students need to use all the new testing centers. If everyone just goes to Carver or Gilman, you will be waiting in a line.” Students are strongly encouraged to take their tests early in the week and early in the day. The first 100 students who check in before 10 a.m. at each testing center on each day will receive a $2.50 ISU Dining gift card. The university will provide 4,000 gift cards over the span of Finals Week. The testing centers have also
TESTING p8
GSB works to make MyState app multilingual By Tong.Lin @iowastatedaily.com
Courtesy of Brianna Levandowskily
Students drink hot chocolate Friday in the residence of President Steven Leath and his wife, First Lady Janet Leath. As part of ISU WinterFest, the Leaths opened up their home so that visitors could see the decorations that took a week-and-a-half to put up.
ISU students get into the spirit during WinterFest ByBrianna.Levandowski @iowastatedaily.com Hot chocolate, Christmas carols and pattering horse hoofs donned the ISU campus for the celebration of WinterFest on Friday and Saturday. The celebrations commenced with Carol of the Bells playing on the famous Edgar W.
and Margaret MacDonald Stanton Memorial Carillon by Iowa State’s carillonneur Tin Shi Tam. Khayree Fitten, sophomore in political science, was co-president of the event. “WinterFest is a really unique tradition here at Iowa State… celebrating our campus in some different ways,” Fitten said. The evening would consist of a variety of free events for stu-
dents and the community members, including campanile tours, horse-drawn carriage rides or ice-skating out at the arena. The most popular event of the evening was the campanile tour, sponsored by the Student Alumni Leadership Council. Tours began at 4 p.m. There were more than a dozen people in line
WINTERFEST p8
Governor recognizes Iowa State for aiding veterans’ transition By Kelly.McGowan @iowastatedaily.com For veterans, transitioning from active duty to college comes with more challenges than most students face. Jathan Chicoine, veteran services coordinator, said that the ISU Veterans Center works to diminish barriers to student success. On Nov. 24, Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds announced that Iowa State has been named a Certified Higher Academic Military Partner as part of the Home Base Iowa Act, a law signed in May which recognizes communities and educational institutions that provide
resources to veterans. “It is reiterating our commitment to providing the best support possible to veterans and their families,” Chicoine said. University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Hawkeye Community College and University of Dubuque were also announced as partners. For an institution to get this designation, it must meet criteria in the categories of on-campus veteran services, mindfulness of service member transitions and financial considerations. Chicoine said that this was just the foundation. He was on the Home Base Iowa working group and has worked with the program from its start. He said that they will continue to build
on it and find better ways to serve veterans. In an October press release, Branstad said that the program is a step towards ensuring that service members have educational resources in their transition to civilian life. “It can be a difficulty for veterans that are coming back [to college],” said Matthew Kots, veteran and sophomore in prebusiness. “It’s not the same as the structured life that they are used to.” Lt. Col. Richard Smith, professor and chairman of the military science and tactics department, said that the program emphasizes the veterans’ back-
VETERANS p8
The ISU MyState app helps ISU students in a variety of ways. It provides a CyRide schedule, campus map, news updates, a directory and more, but it does this in only one language: English. Have you ever thought about getting this necessary information about the ISU campus in other languages? The Government of the Student Body has been working on making the MyState app multilingual for students whose native language is not English. “The idea of making [the] MyState app multilingual is one of the easier ways to enhance cross-cultural communication on campus,” said Presha Kardile, GSB director of student diversity and senior in management. “International students tend to struggle with languages when they just get here. It’s easier to make them feel at home and welcome.” GSB is considering making the app in Mandarin and Spanish because of the large amount of the Chinese students and students from Spanish-speaking countries on the campus. International students make up about 12 percent of the student population. There are almost 2,000 students from China, the country from which there are the most international students, with about 3,500 students from Asia. There are just over 200 students from 16 Spanish-speaking countries, according to the ISU Fact Book. “At this point, the app is undergoing a second-phase update, and we will be resuming our project next semester once this update is completed,” Kardile said. “The only thing we have done was talking about the application and [seeing] if there were more languages we would like to add.” She said she is excited to see how this project is going to turn out. Brittany Dudley, senior in finance, did a survey for her English project and discovered that 66 percent of the respondents
Caitlin Ellingson/Iowa State Daily
The MyState app will be expanding to appeal to a larger audience by adding multilingual options, especially for international students, who make up approximately 12% of the ISU student population.
have used the MyState app. About 97 percent of responders used the app for the CyRide schedule, 88 percent used it for the campus map and 85 percent used it to look up where buildings are on campus and when the dining centers are open. “MyState app has an effective way of engaging students to acquire more news about campus,” said Zhengyu Liu, graduate student in civil, construction and environmental engineering. Liu is also an international student from China. “Multilingual is a great idea but not necessary for the app that was actually being used. Enlarging the app system will be more helpful for the students. Links to the AccessPlus, Blackboard and school [websites] will be even more important than making the app multilingual.” International students are not the only ones who are interested in this project — American students are also looking forward to using this upgrade to possibly help them learn another language. “I think it’s a good thinking of making this app multilingual,” said Rachel McDermott, freshman in open option. “People can actually learn some new languages while playing with their phones.”