TECHNICIAN
friday october
4
2013
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
Email popularity wanes, students and faculty face communication barrier Jacqueline Lee Correspondent
ALEX CAO/TECHNICIAN
Several people, including professors, recently filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the sale of the Hofmann forest.
Sale of Hofmann Forest leads to legal battle Sasha Afanasieva Staff Writer
The sale of the Hofmann forest has been a source of discussion, conflict and protest at N.C. State since the sale was announced last spring. Recently however, people who are unhappy about the sale found a new venue in which to make their discontent known—the courtroom N.C. State’s Board of Trustees is in the process of selling the Hofmann Forest, which is the largest single piece of land owned by the University, and in an attempt to stop the board, several people, including N.C. State professors, recently filed a lawsuit. Frederick W. Cubbage, professor of the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at N.C. State, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “The lawsuit itself basically states that the Hofmann Forest is state land that belongs to North Carolina State University, so therefore
it should follow state rules and regulation,” Cubbage said. The lawsuit was filed on the grounds that the University did not follow the State Environmental Protection Act. “SEPA requires looking and analyzing alternatives and the second part of SEPA that we contested is that it requires public agency and citizen input in the decision on the alternatives,” Cubbage said. According to Cubbage, there were at least four alternatives that weren’t properly analyzed: conservation easement that would block development, leasing the forest, selling a smaller part of the forest or keeping the forest. “There are large amounts of biodiversity in the forest,” Cubbage said. “Water and wildlife would also be negatively affected if the forest is sold and developed. There will be huge adverse environmental impacts.” Mary Watzin, dean of the College of Natu-
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N.C. State professors use email as a primary means of communication with their students. According to a recent column from The New York Times, some students around the country don’t like to check emails, but prefer social media and texting. “Email has never really been a fun thing to use,” Morgan Judge, a sophomore at Fordham University in New York, told The New York Times. “It’s always like, ‘This is something you have to do.’ School is a boring thing. Email is a boring thing. It goes together.” Director of Enrollment Management in the College of Natural Resources, Tiffany McLean, emphasized the importance of getting students in the habit of using their email. “If we don’t start setting expectations with students and teaching them proper email etiquette and the importance of checking emails, then we’re not setting them up for success in the business world,” McLean said. “The business world is not going to adjust to the students.” McLean said in her first meetings with classes or student organizations, she
makes it clear that students are expected to communicate by email and respond within 72 hours. She said that when these rules are set, she doesn’t have any problems. “I check my emails because it goes to my phone,” said Hayden Black, junior majoring in Sport Management. “If I did not get notifications to my phone, I probably would not check it. I don’t use it too often because only one of my teachers emails me and I haven’t had the need to contact others.” Dara Leeder, director of Student Recruitment and Retention at the College of Humanities and Social Science, often uses email to communicate with students. She said students tell her that the emails they receive are very helpful, though there are still many students that request not to receive them. “I think that faculty and staff should continue to set the expectation from the beginning of our students’ time here that they must check their email on a regular basis, or they will miss out on crucial messages or interesting opportunities,” Leeder said. Leeder said it is very important to get students accustomed to email communication as a precursor to the communication they will do
in the future as part of internships and full-time jobs. “Texting and social media are fine for some purposes, but tend to be very informal, without proper greetings, spelling and sentence structure,” Leeder said. “Students should be exposed to more professional forms of communication that convey their messages with respect, intelligence and courtesy.” Leeder said she thinks communication between students and faculty as a whole is good. The faculty tries to treat students as adults and hope they will take responsibility to fulfill their end of the communication partnership. “I feel like I can communicate really well through email with teachers and most of them respond real quickly,” said Kirby Haigler, a freshman in engineering. “I’d rather try to do office hours because they highly advertise. Through my experience, I’ve been mostly able to reach most of my teachers well.” Leeder said that she hears students regularly do not go to their teachers’ office hours to talk about their classes, research, career or academic goals. “In-person interaction is the best way of forging a connection with instructors
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University markets to out-of-state Triangle unemployment rates show improvement students despite national trend Katherine Kehoe Correspondent
Although national trends show little change in the number of students traveling to attend college close to home, N.C. State appears to be attracting more national and international students than in previous years. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, during the last 40 years, the average distance undergraduates travel for college have shifted minimally. The Chronicle’s data showed that in both 1971 and 2012, 53 percent of freshmen chose a school within 100 miles of home. According to collegeboard.org, 81 percent of students were enrolled in their state of residence in 2010. Nationally, students are consistently staying close to home to go to school. But, according to Louis Hunt, vice provost and university registrar, N.C. State has been experiencing something different. “Basically, our out of state numbers have increased,” Hunt said. “In 2007 it was about 8.5 percent of our
incoming freshmen, and now it’s about a little over 16 percent. The number of international undergraduates have tripled in the last three to four years.” Hunt said that the University has been deliberately promoting N.C. State to students in other areas of the country, and are accepting a higher percentage of out-of-state students and international students than they did in the past. “It was an effort to kind of balance it,” Hunt said. “We wanted more international students so we had a more global feel on the campus. We wanted more out-of-state just to diversify the enrollment.” According to Hunt, the University has no problem attracting students from in-state, and that both the number of in-state and out-ofstate applications to N.C. State have gone up. “Historically, we’ve had real strength in North Carolina in terms of attracting kids,” Hunt said. According to a survey conducted this year by The Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 percent of the respondents of full-time, four-year degree
students said that being close to home was a very important factor in their college choice. Nick Hackett, a freshman in natural resources, said that this is probably because of financial reasons. “I am from Raleigh. I was the oldest of six, so it would be really expensive if all of us went out-of-state, so I had to stay in-state,” Hackett said. Angela Curtin, from Raleigh, is a freshmen in animal science. She said she chose N.C. State because it made sense for her major—not for the proximity to home. “I am pre-vet and they have a really good vet program here,” Curtin said. “I wanted the vet program, so that was the main reason I went here. I don’t go home that much.” Some students, such as Jenna Neely from Greensboro, who is a junior in English, and Melora Trowell from Raleigh, who is a freshman in the First Year College, said some distance between themselves and the family can be good—but not too much.
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Tutor involved in UNC scandal indicted Staff Report
Former tutor of UNC-Chapel Hill, allegedly involved in the football program scandal, was charged with four felony counts in an Orange County courthouse Thursday, WRAL reported. Jennifer Lauren Wiley Thompson is the fifth person this week in relation to the scandal to appear in court. Thursday afternoon was Wiley’s first appearance in the Orange county District Court. Wiley is one of 10 people the
NCAA has investigated to have provided UNC football players with inappropriate academic and financial benefits. Wiley has been charged with violating the North Carolina Uniform Athlete Agents Act, a state law regarding interaction between sports agents and athletes. According to The News & Observer, Wiley’s indictment states that in May 2010, she obtained a $579 round-trip airline ticket to Florida for UNC football player Greg Little, and later that year delivered little
packages of cash totaling $2,150. Investigators link her actions to efforts to get him to sign a contract with Terry Watson of the Watson Sports Agency. Each of Wiley’s felonies carry a maximum jail time of 15 months— her bond was set at $15,000.Wiley is expected to appear back in the Orange County Superior Court Oct. 15. More arrests related to the scandal are expected in the coming days.
Ravi Chittilla Staff Writer
More people in the Triangle are getting jobs as unemployment dropped significantly in August to its lowest point in about five years, The News & Observer reported Wednesday. In July, the jobless rate was 7.2 percent, but has now fell to 6.6 percent in August—dropping to its lowest since November 2008, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce. Michael Walden, professor of agricultural economics, said although the Triangle suffered because of the recession, unemployment has continued to improve since 2010. “The triangle has the exact kind of economy that will do well in the future,” Walden said. “It is primarily an economy based on higher education. There’s a constant flow of graduates, and businesses love that. There’s a perfect marriage between the kinds of businesses that’ll thrive in this kind of economy and the type of workforce available.”
Walden said there is still room for improvement, but plenty to be optimistic for. “At one point in the 1990s, the unemployment rate was below two percent,” Walden said. “So we’re in the six’s, which is still high by our standards, but we are rapidly going in the right direction. The triangle will likely add around 30,000 jobs, the unemployment rate will continue to go down, and I think we could easily be in the low five percent rate sometime next year.” David Zonderman, professor and associate department head of history, said while the Triangle and other metropolitan areas in the state continue to improve, other areas in the state continue to suffer from stagnant growth and high unemployment. “We’re not immune to the national economy,” Zonderman said. “As the national economy is slowly recovering, North Carolina’s will slowly improve too. What I’m more
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ADDICTION OVER
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