Jan. 30, 2014

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THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE VOLUME 133, ISSUE 14 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2014

SERVING THE UC DAVIS CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY SINCE 1915

UC Student Regent visits UC Davis

BRIAN NGUYEN | AGGIE

Folsom lake is currently at onefifth its capacity. Three years ago, these rocks would have been sub-

Student Regent application sees changes

merged under a few feet of water.

JASON PHAM campus@theaggie.org

On Jan. 24, UC Student Regent Cinthia Flores and Regent-designate Sadia Saifuddin visited UC Davis to discuss the upcoming 2015-16 Student Regent Application, as well as answer questions from the public about the state of the University of California (UC). The meeting was held from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. in South Hall. The Student Regent is a representative of approximately 230,000 professional, graduate and undergraduate UC students on the UC system’s governing board, the Board of Regents. The bulk of the meeting was spent showing a presentation by the Student Regent representatives on changes to the Student Regent application and encouraging students to apply. A major change to the application includes a switch from paper to online submissions. According to Flores, instead of submitting a paper application to their respective chancellor, students will now email their application to Anne Shaw, associate secretary of the Regents and their prospective campus’ Regent liaison. Another change to the application includes a new personal statement format. Instead of having to answer specific questions in a character limit as done in previous years, the application will now ask students to write a six-page, double-spaced narrative based on guided questions. During the meeting, Flores encouraged students from UC Davis to apply for the position because of a lack of Student Regent

California in drought, State of Emergency Governor calls for water conservation to counteract shortages

SHANNON SMITH city@theaggie.org

The State of California has been officially declared in a drought State of Emergency on Jan. 17 by Gov. Jerry Brown. According to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, dry conditions were experienced statewide in 2012 and 2013 based on reports by the U.S. Drought Monitor and the Department of Water Resources.

regents on 9

UC Davis computer

Regions of the Central Valley and Southern California have been experiencing extreme drought conditions. Additionally, on the eastern border, there are record-low snowpack measurements, about 84 percent below average. “The record has been surpassed for most days during the rainy season without rain,” said Clark Blanchard, spokesman for the Natural Resources Agency. “This is the driest that California has been since 1884.”

Computer science lecturer Sean Davis stands in his office filled with old and new computer parts, as well as posters from the various plays he has seen.

moonlights as Fringe Festival blogger S e a n D av i s d a b b l e s i n Scot t ish theater

RITIKA IYER features@theaggie.org

UC Davis continuing lecturer Sean Davis watches 160 to 200 plays every August. For the rest of the year, he teaches computer science. “I think I am lucky enough to be gifted with a wide range of interests,” Davis said. “I’m a general contractor, I review plays and I teach computer science.” Like many undergraduate students on campus today, Davis started in the 1970s with no specific major interests. After bouncing from chemical engineering to history, Davis graduated with a Bachelor of Arts psychology degree in 1978, having zero idea that one day he would rejoin the Aggie community as a faculty member in the College of Engineering. “It’s kind of cool because you realize that he absolutely didn’t know what he wanted to do at our age,” said second-year animal biology and computer science double major Russell Miller, who took En-

davis on 13

U C D avis S tore par t ner s w i t h Ama zo n GABRIELLA HAMLETT city@theaggie.org

On Nov. 22, 2013, the UC Davis Bookstore officially announced online its partnership with Amazon — the first partnership that Amazon has had with any university. Amazon approached UC Davis during Spring Quarter 2013 to

pitch the idea of this pilot program. UC Davis will receive a little over two percent of most purchases by students that shop at Amazon with a UC Davis email account, or customers that shop at davis.amazon.com. According to a Jan. 27 news release, students can sign up for a free six-month membership of Amazon Prime that

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gineering Computer Science (ECS) 30: Programming and Problem Solving and ECS 50: Machine Dependent Programming with Davis. “He had a very generalized education, and learned most of the computer science he knows now on his own.” Davis picked up a keen interest in computers and programming after graduation, fostered by his purchase of a small computer from the children’s store, Toys “R” Us. After some self-teaching and experimenting with various projects, Davis applied to the UC Davis Ph.D. program in computer science, but ended up getting a master’s degree and teaching ECS classes in 1994. Davis described his teaching style as active and crazy. He said he doesn’t mind suddenly jumping up in class or walking up and down the aisles of the lecture hall in an attempt to grab students’ attention. “When he teaches, he is more of a casual teacher, he doesn’t just lecture from his slides. It’s really nice and easy to pay attention to if you want to,” Miller said. “I think that even though he’s one of the hardest teachers, he is also considered one of the best teachers.” Apart from teaching, Davis enjoys dabbling in subjects outside of computer science quite often. One such interest lies in Scottish theater, specifically plays

ROS A FURNEAUX | AGGIE

science lecturer

The effects of the drought are visible in lakes and mountains where the landscape requires precipitation to retain its functional and recreational purposes. Locally, the severity is evident at Folsom Lake, Lake Tahoe, the Sierra Nevada and agricultural establishments around Sacramento and in central California. “Some municipalities have prepared accordingly,” said Nancy Barker from the UC Davis Extension’s Department of Land Use and Natural Resources. “However, most communities are high and dry; for example, places that take water from Folsom or the American River are in danger of their pipes running dry.” According to the official written Proclamation of the

Collaboration expected to bring in revenue for bookstore, student scholarship funds

would provide free two-day shipping. After the six months, students would pay $39 to continue their membership — 50 percent less than the regular price. UC Davis Stores Director Jason Lorgan, said that a portion of the funds will go to support a upcoming textbook scholarship program for students in 2014. The rest will fund other student

programs and services. “They recognized our store was the first university store in the nation to offer our students textbook price comparisons on our ucdavisstores.com textbook ordering page, resulting in UC Davis Stores being one of their larger amazon on 9


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Jan. 30, 2014 by The California Aggie - Issuu