UTSA UTSA Assistant Professor of Geology Marina Suarez has been awarded a $478,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to research paleoclimatology (the study of the earth’s climate in the distant past). Suarez plans to conduct her research around Cretaceous rocks in China, Spain, Utah and Texas.
THEY PLAY, STUDENTS PAY BUT IT’S NOT ALL
Texas According to a review compiled by The Texas Tribune, of annual financial reports submitted to the NCAA by all eight public universities in Texas that play in the highest level of college football, the Football Bowl Subdivision. The schools collected $27 million in student fees that went to athletics in 2008. In the 2015 fiscal year, that number had more than doubled to $57 million. (Private colleges also have to submit records but are not required to make them available under the state’s open records laws.)
U.S. The Justice Department canceled a hearing intended to settle the publicized dispute between Apple and and the F.B.I. about the agency’s request that the tech company create a “backdoor” for secured iPhones. Such a backdoor would allow the F.B.I. to access password protected phones. Following the cancellation, the Justice Department stated it “might no longer need Apple’s assistance to extract data from the device.”
Science Comets may have been responsible for bringing the noble gases to Earth. According to the publication “Earth and Planetary Sciences,” a shipment of a crucial part of the planet’s chemical inventory arrived during the Late Heavy Bombardment about 600 million years after the start of the solar system — when the moon (and supposedly Earth) was pummeled by debris from the outer solar system as the giant planets abruptly settled into the current orbits.
ABOUT FOOTBALL... UTSA students pay more in athletic fees than students at other universities pay. However, the athletic departments of those universities are just as — and often times even more — reliant on student fees and university funds to break even than UTSA’s Athletic Department is.
See Page 6 Graphic by Fabian De Soto , The Paisano
E-cigarettes Students save on textbooks with discouraged OpenStax-UTSA Libraries partnership in new PSA
“OpenStax has saved students $66 million since 2012 and will save students $39 million this academic year alone”.
Adriene Goodwin News Assistant
Dani Nicholson
Associate Director of Marketing and Communications, OpenStax
@hey_adreezy news@paisano-online.com
Jesus Nieves Contributing Writer
@ThePaisano news@paisano-online.com Jaswanth Kintada, Treasurer of UTSA Student Government Association (SGA), is currently leading the campaign for a Public Service Announcement (PSA) about e-cigarettes. The objective of the PSA is to inform students on the effects of tobacco products, as well as keep UTSA a tobacco-free campus. UTSA has been smoke and tobacco free since June 1 2014, and prohibits the use of any tobacco products. Ecigarettes, or e-cigs, are on the list of tobacco products that are banned on campus. However, a February 2016 article from Consumer Reports notes that e-cigs neither contain nor emit tobacco. While e-liquids do not contain tobacco, they do contain a chemical called propylene glycol, that is mixed with the addictive substance nicotine. E-cigs have grown in popularity due to their stylish look and the gamut of flavors available. See PSA, page2
Since 2012, OpenStax has saved students $66 million in textbook costs.
Katelyn Wilkinson Staff Writer
@KatelynMarie11 news@paisano-online.com UTSA Libraries has partnered with OpenStax, a non-profit Rice University initiative funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that provides free textbooks to students. “Our mission is to increase access to education. We believe in academic freedom, so we ask faculty to review our textbooks and decide for themselves if they will be a good fit,” says Dani Nicholson, the associate director of marketing and communications at Openstax. Aligned with the same goals of cutting student expenses and increasing access, UTSA Libraries has partnered with OpenStax. According to Nicholson “Once an instructor adopts an OpenStax textbook, students will potentially save hundreds of dollars and possibly perform better in their courses because they have access to materials on day one of class.”
OpenStax is a non-profit organization funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The group has developed over 20 free, peer-reviewed textbooks for introductory college courses and is in the process of developing more. These textbooks are available to instructors at any institution and are completely free; however, DeeAnn Green, the UTSA Social Sciences Librarian, says that UTSA Libraries’ collaboration with OpenStax will benefit UTSA by giving the university access to OpenStax’s experience and proficiency in open-educational resources as well as OpenStax’s free consultation, workshops and grant programs. This collaboration, according to Green, will help UTSA become more proficient in open-educational resources, which will lead to more accessible education for all students. “UTSA libraries’ partnership with OpenStax will lay the foundation for quicker expansion and growth in open textbook adoption at
Andrea Velgis , The Paisano
UTSA,” Green said. “The partnership’s main goals are to ease the financial burden from purchasing traditional textbooks and ultimately help with student retention and success.” “OpenStax has saved students $66 million since 2012 and will save students $39 million this academic year alone,” says Nicholson. wIn terms of the nonprofit’s reach, she explained that at least one OpenStax textbook is in use at one in 5 colleges and universities in the United States. Alluding to beginning of semester challenges, Nicholson went on to say that OpenStax benefits students by providing access to course materials on the first day of class while saving hundreds of dollars in course-material fees. Junior Richard Hillman, a criminal justice major and sociology minor, said he loved using an OpenStax textbook in one of his classes last semester. Hillman, a veteran, said that he had to wait on funding and fell behind in his classes
because he could not buy textbooks. He dropped one course altogether because the materials were over $300. The only class he was able to keep up with was the sociology class that used an OpenStax text because it was free and available the first day of class. “I love the fact that the [OpenStax] books are all digitized because you can copy and paste and make your own reviews for exams. Openstax is much better than traditional textbooks,” Hillman said. UTSA Libraries sponsored a workshop with OpenStax on Feb 29 during which 10 faculty members applied to use OpenStax textbooks in their classrooms. According to Green, these faculty members will adopt low-cost or free materials in their classrooms.. If their applications are approved, instructors will begin using OpenStax materials Fall 2016.