Advocate The Independent Student Voice of Mt. Hood Community College
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www.advocate-online.net January 24, 2014
Volume 49 Issue 14
Pretty in Pink
Photo by Carole Riggs - The Advocate
Mt. Hood is captured glowing salmon pink at sunset on a cold weekend in December as seen from Sandy, Ore.
Profile of the month:
Recognizing deserving students at the recommendation of MHCC staff
Game designer uses his passion, embraces responsibility by Danny Perez-Crouse
The Advocate
Robert Loop
Robert Loop is an aspiring game designer at Mt. Hood who has drawn much acclaim from his instructor, Erika Ruhl. “He’s one of the top five hardest working students I’ve had,” said Ruhl. “He exemplifies the type of student who will succeed in the game industry, constantly pushing himself to be better and better. “He takes criticism well, and always goes the extra mile,” she said. Loop attributes his focus and success with his age, and love of game design. “I’m older now (28) and I know what I want to do. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 18,” he said. Despite the high praise, Loop is humble about his abilities. “I’m decent, but I’ve got a lot of work to go. It’s a never-ending process of getting better,” he said. His passion and prowess in design have given Loop the opportunity to work with Ruhl. He’s made the most of the chance. “He has taken his new role as my teaching assistant more than seriously, excelling at his own work and ensuring everyone else is on the same
page as well,” Ruhl said. Loop embraced the added responsibility. “She asked if anyone wanted the position, and I’m a broke college student who needs money,” he said. He explained life as a teacher’s assistant like this: “You sit and look pretty for a little bit, but once (Ruhl) gets started on tutorials, you are pretty much running around the room answering questions.“ It’s stressful for the first few weeks, because people are learning something completely new. She puts in a lot of information and they get really lost,” he said. Still, it’s been fun, he said. “I like helping people. I want to see more people at this school become game designers,” Loop said. He said he’s found Ruhl is a good person to work with. “We share videos and stuff and mess with each other.” Loop is still deciding on what field of design he wants to focus on. “I haven’t really narrowed down what field I want to pursue, because there are so many options. The top three are modeling, reading and animation,” he said.
Ruhl has told Loop that he is very good at modeling (the process of developing a mathematical representation of any three-dimensional surface), which he enjoys. “You get to create things. How does it get cooler than that?” he said. If Loop could work for a development team, he would prefer to go with Havoc (a middleware software suite) or Valve (a game development company). “I like their (Havoc’s) art style and attitude towards game development.” As for Valve, he “adores” their work ethic, he said. Loop has played video games since childhood. The attraction grew quickly. “The first games that inspired me where the Nintendo and Mario stuff. All of the Final Fantasies really inspire me,” he said. “Anything and everything really inspires me.”
POTM
Continued on page 6
New Humanities dean arrives in February
Full-time faculty poised for contract breakthrough
by Greg Leonov
by Katelyn Hilsenbeck
The Advocate Mt. Hood’s newly hired Dean of Humanities, Sara Rivara, is set to assume her position on Feb. 1, according to Christie Plinski, vice president of instruction and student services. Rivara comes from Michigan, where she has been a writing and literature instructor at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. She was unable to begin at Mt. Hood in the fall term due to previous personal obligations, Plinski said.
Jim Kline has served as temporary Humanities dean since September, and will now make way for Rivara. Mt. Hood hasn’t had a permanent Dean of Humanities since Ursula Irwin, using a series of interim leaders until now. No official word on Rivara’s arrival has come from MHCC administrators. President Debbie Derr is expected to soon formally announce her new role.
The Advocate After several months of sluggish labor negotiations, a new contract agreement between the Mt. Hood full-time faculty union and school administrators could be reached as early as today. The two sides pushed through 20 hours of mediation last Friday, working into the wee hours of the morning. They huddled again for 13 hours on Wednesday. The union’s leader said the marathon talks have the two sides poised to land a new deal. “We’re close and hope to get finished this week,” Sara Williams, MHCC full-time faculty association president, said on Thursday. “We really had hoped to be done yesterday (Wednesday), so, I’m really trying to get the energy to do it one more time.”
Dean
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Maggie Huffman, Mt. Hood communications director, said the negotiations are “getting close to conclusion – I think everyone sees the light at the end of the tunnel.” The faculty and administration sides came to a tentative agreement on every contract article except two, Williams said. “On (last) Friday we made it to an agreement on most of the money issues in concept, but we hadn’t written the (formal) language,” she said. As far as a breakthrough moment, Williams said there wasn’t a particular instant. “It’s just that you suddenly realized that your position and the position of the other side,” she said.
Contract
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2013 First place
General excellence Oregon Newspaper Publisher Association
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