TECHNICIAN
thursday september
18 2014
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
New formalized fraternity rush faces challenges Inez Nicholson Correspondent
VICTORIA CROCKER/TECHNICIAN
Will Garrison, junior in chemical engineering, and Yang Ho, a junior in physics, applied mathematics, and computer science, performed with Lion Dance Troupe at NC State on September 19, 2013. They were celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival which is celebrated throughout Asia. This celebration was hosted by Kappa Phi Lambda and Chinese Undergraduate Student Association (CUSA).
Lion Dance Troupe celebrates traditional Chinese culture Sara Awad Assistant Features Editor
Tucked away in the Honors Village Commons multipurpose room, senior in physics Yang Ho bounces and bobs about in the shrouds of a lion costume. Ho performs this ritual Sunday afternoons along with other students as part of Lion Dance Troupe, an organization he co-founded with Peter Vu, a senior in chemical engineering, in order to educate the community about China’s traditional lion dance. The dance coordinates rigid movements of kung-fu along with a little freestyle to the beat of a drum and several gongs, according to Ho. Southeast Asia popularized the dance, which started off as a tradition in the Chinese martial arts school. “The lion dancing symbolizes a lot of things that the tiger symbolizes in China, which is actually kind of interesting, because tigers are much more prevalent in Asia than lions are…but it really symbolizes power,
good fortune, strength, wealth,” Ho said. “If one school has a lot of lions, that school is seen as very good, very rich, very prestigious.” Dancers perform stunts while dressed in elaborate lion costumes consisting of two parts: the head and the tail, held together by a blanket-like canvas, Ho said. The dancer inside the head of the lion acts a puppeteer, who winks the lion’s eyes, flaps its ears and opens its mouth while the dancer inside the tail helps lift the head. “I’m in the back basically hunched over down at 90 degrees hanging on my hands to Yang’s waist,” said William Garrison, a club member and junior in chemical engineering and international studies. Originally, performers used big, powerful stances in their movements to mimic the power of a menacing lion, a style known as futsan, according to Ho. Later as the dance evolved, the tamer hoksan style took center stage.
“The way of hoksan originated when one of the prominent practitioners of futsan was just kind of observing this cat and then he kind of realized that the lion dancing didn’t look anything like a lion or a cat…so he modified the style to make it look more modern and playful, and so a lot of the movements are a lot more joyful and softer, so it looks more like a small cat or kind of like a puppy…” Ho said. The third style of dance, fukhok, creates a middle ground by combining elements from both styles, according to Ho. The percussion instruments then dictate the pace and direction of the scene, Ho said. Since people stationed in China and Southeast Asia make the lion heads by hand, its cost ranges anywhere from $600 to $1,000. “It’s very intricate,” Ho said. “In
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Researchers find having a mentor can lead to a more fulfilling career Emily Duckett Correspondent
People who have had mentors throughout their lifetimes are likely to have a more satisfying and more intrisically valuable career, according to new NC State research. Joshua Lambert, a sociology Ph.D. student and co-author of the study, said researchers wanted to know more about the impact of informal mentoring on labor market outcomes because of the lack of information currently available about the effects of long term mentoring. The study found people who had mentoring relationships were more likely to emphasize intrinsic job rewards, such as caring about their quality of work and feeling their jobs are important and making a difference. People with mentor relationships were less likely to care as much about extrinsic job rewards, such as better wages and compensation. Lambert said a mentor is any nonparental adult figure that takes an interest in someone’s life. “We come in contact with other folks, and they become quite important and instrumental in our lives,” said Steve McDonald, sociology professor at NC State and lead author of the study. McDonald said examples of men-
NC State’s first ever formalized fraternity rush implemented by the Interfraternity Council ended last week. However, some members said the formalization caused problems and delivered unintended consequences. “At first, it was good,” said Adam Elshanawany, recruitment chair of Sigma Pi-Rho and sophomore in biological engineering. “It gave us a chance to meet guys that I normally wouldn’t outside of rush. And then, my opinions really changed with the results.” Rush week began Sept.12 at the Miller Fields, where each of the 22 fraternities had a tent and talked to
potential members about what their particular chapter had to offer. From there, potential members were told to pick their top six. “There was a lot of cool people I met,” said Ethan Hill, newly pledged Sigma Phi Epsilon and engineering first-year freshman. “But by the time I was at my 22nd tent, I totally forgot who I had talked to at my first.” On Saturday, the pledges went to the houses of the six fraternities they chose the day before. Transportation to carry the pledges back and forth between the on and off campus fraternities was included in the $30 registration fee. IFC ordered five buses for Saturday’s Open House. However, only three buses arrived.
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Engineering program extends to Eastern NC Colleen Kinen-Ferguson Staff Writer
NC State’s engineering program now has a branch in the Havelock campus of Craven Community College in New Bern in an effort to provide residents in Eastern, North Carolina an opportunity to obtain an engineering degree. “As a land grant university, the College of Engineering wanted to establish a program to serve the needs of residents of Northeastern North Carolina,” said Linda Krute, director of distance education engineering programs at NC State. “We saw this as an opportunity to reach out to residents who wanted to stay and pursue careers in engineering.” The program began when two alumni from NC State’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, Dennis West and Chris Holder, approached NC State about beginning an engineering program for the civilian engineers of the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point. The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and the department of defense at Cherry Point are among the largest employers in Eastern North Carolina, employing more than 3,200 people. Of these, more than 600 are civilian engineers. The program was designed for students who wanted the benefits of an NC State engineering degree but
can’t make it to Raleigh. “People want an engineering degree, but they can’t quit their jobs or uproot their families,” said Richard Gould, RJ Reynolds Department head at NC State. The length of the program depends entirely on the students. For full-time students, it normally takes around four years, whereas part-time takes six, according to Bill Fortney, Eastern regional director for Engineering Programs. “That’s the beauty of the program,” Fortney said. “It’s completely flexible. Students with little to no experience in engineering can take Calculus at Craven Community, and then transfer to Havelock to earn their degrees. It can really make a difference for people.” Krute said this program is unique. “It doesn’t exist in Raleigh, but the courses taught at Havelock are delivered from Raleigh.” With this program, students can learn Mechanical Engineering Systems, which is a degree not available in Raleigh. In order to attend Havelock, students must apply to the program in the same way they would apply to NC State. Havelock is a site-based program designed specifically for residents of the area, whether they are long-time locals or students wishing to remain and work in the area after college. “It’s for the students who want an
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Dialect quiz creator to speak at D.H. Hill CHANDLER PLACHY/TECHNICIAN
Mentor Katie Almasy, a sophomore in chemistry, meets with Christina LaMaire, a freshman in chemistry at Clark Dining Hall as a part of the Goodnight Scholars Mentor Program at NC State.
tors include teachers, clergy members, employers or relatives. The researchers studied informal mentoring relationships in adolescents, and many of the mentors adolescents had in the study were teachers. “I think a lot of it has to do with the mentor taking it upon themselves to have an investment in the adolescent’s future,” Lambert said. “That can look many different ways: It can be more emotional support, it can be very instrumental, or it can be more along the lines of role modeling.”
The study followed people who said they had mentors as well as people who didn’t and also used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. Researchers looked at information about these people over time to see what their employment outcomes were like later on, McDonald said. The study tried to discover whether there was a causal relationship between mentoring relationships and the labor market and also whether or not the impact was
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Staff Report
Josh Katz, an NC State alum and creator of the most visited piece of content for The New York Times in 2013, will speak Thursday in the Erdhal Cloyd Auditorium at D.H. Hill Library. While a grad student in the Department of Statistics at NC State, Katz decided to analyze in more detail results from the Harvard Dialect Survey which led Katz to create a dialect map on the use of “y’all,” “youse,” and “you guys” across the United States. After posting this initial map to the NC State website, The New York Times graphics desk discovered it and offered him an internship. This internship gave Katz the
platform to dive deeper into the statistics and further refine the data of his initial map. After publishing the new map with The New York Times it quickly became the most popular content for the newspaper in 2013. Katz now works at The Upshot as a data analysis journalist. The Upshot is a New York Times website that combines statistics with data visualization. The discussion on Thursday will follow Katz’s career trajectory and how data visualization is improving researchers’ ability to break down complex information to the general public. The discussion will be moderated by NC State students Dan Oliver and Gino Lerebours. This program is part of the “Amazing Alumni” series and will start at 3 p.m. on Thursday.