The Egalitarian: April 6, 2016

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Today’s Weather

81 / 53 Partly cloudy with a slight breeze from the WSW. Only a 20% chance of rain.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2016 • VOL. 43, NO. 6 • WWW.HCCEGALITARIAN.COM • @HCC_EGALITARIAN

A beautiful struggle: Elisa Cardenas see On Campus, Page 2

Binge-watching gold

Nuggets of wisdom

see Culture, page 10

see Community, Page 4

I am my brother’s keeper JimmiekA mills THE EGALITARIAN

Looking for a job based on your experience while still in school is difficult to say the least. Most employers want you to have some sort of hands-on experience before they are willing to make an investment in you. Usually to gain such experience, students would have to essentially volunteer their time with an organization which will consider their experience as an internship. Internships are usually unpaid which poses another obstacle for most students. How do you cover your mounting expenses when all your extra time is tied up in rendering free services? What if I told you there was a program that will allow you to gain that hands on experience while paying you for your time? One organization is not only employing students, but is also preparing students for one of the fastest growing industries in the world. iEducate USA is a nonprofit organization that places STEM students from colleges and universities in classrooms with elementary school kids in an effort to engage them in math and science. “We take undergrad and graduate students from colleges and universities around the area and we embed them in the classroom during regular classroom hours,” says Dr. Roopa Gir, President and

Courtesy of Arun Gir Maria Ruiz iEducate tutor at Crockett Elementary School CEO of iEducate. “They do roughly 10 hrs to sometimes a maximum of 20 hours a week. It depends on what the course load is, and they get paid $12 an hour.” Although colleges and universities offer work-study programs as well, iEducate has seen a difference in their tutors vs those involved in programs other than iEducate. “We feel that our tutors and community members are a bit more engaged. Our tutors are in the classrooms every day of the week, and many are actually going a grade above with the students,” said Amir

Eskafyan, iEducate Outreach Director. Tutors are referred to as Master Teachers by iEducate staff. They are gaining much more than a paycheck while in the classrooms with students. “I have grown a lot since joining iEducate. I am more confident about myself, given the fact that I have inspired many kids to study and become someone in life,” says Andres Restrepo, a University of Houston Biology major and iEducate tutor at Blackshear Elementary school. He adds, “I have been able to appreciate a lot more the power of education.”

The tutors are fully engaged with students and are extremely close with faculty and staff at the participating schools. This has led iEducate to take a different approach than when the organization first started in 2013. “By the requests of teachers and students, we kept certain tutors with the classroom or with a particular teacher not just as a benefit for the students, but iEducate is serving a huge benefit to the teachers,” says Dr. Gir. With teacher to student ratios growing, the need for more support in the classrooms are proving to be vital for early student success. Especially in the areas of math and science where only 45 percent of high school graduates are ready for college math and 30 percent for science. “You would be surprised. There are many students a Blackshear that are gifted and talented. But there is only one teacher in the classroom,” says Dr. Gir. Although iEducate’s goal is to increase students engagement and understanding of math and sciences, Eskafyan says they have noticed much more. “These students and tutors are forming extremely strong relationships to where, it’s not just a tutor at that point, it’s more of a mentor. These bonds formed pretty organically without direction from us.” iEducate’s platform has seen success for many reasons. “Someone who is a little closer to age

E

SEE I DUCATE,

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Non-profit, pocket friendly JimmiekA mills THE EGALITARIAN

“With our college textbooks, we have saved 674,000 students $66 million since 2012, and will save 392,000 students $39 million this academic year alone,” noted Dani Nicholson, the Associate Director of Marketing and Communications at OpenStax. OpenStax is Rice University’s non-profit educational materials and technology initiative. They provide free, peerreviewed content that covers the standard scope and sequence requirements for introductory college courses. Essentially, the concepts of courses like algebra, biology, calculus and psychology to name a few. Founded in 1999 by Rice University’s electrical

engineering Professor Richard Baraniuk, OpenStax was originally named Connexions. OpenStax began as an Open Educational Resource (OER) repository where faculty around the world could publish, share, and remix educational materials. OpenStax has since expanded its offerings by not only providing a library that hosts thousands of pieces of educational content, but also by providing a line of free, peer-reviewed textbooks for introductory college courses and by developing personalized learning technology. The College Board’s estimation that the average cost of books and supplies is at $1,364 for the 2015-2016 semester reveal that more affordable textbook options are essential to student success. For many students, going

without the required textbook is simply not an option. “I can go online and download information that is equivalent to the information in the textbook my teacher wants us to have, but my math and science classes require me to submit my homework online and the access codes still cost me over $100! That is outrageous,” said Kevin Jacobs, an engineering major at Houston Community College. One barrier to adoption of open source material is the need for homework websites. Many of the required textbooks students must have for class also require online access to homework materials. These requirements are mandatory, so many students who are hoping to use an open source text instead of the required text will still need to

Courtesy of Rice University Richard Baranick, Director of OpenStax, sitting among five of many college text books that are avalible through the program. spend money for homework website access. OpenStax created a solution for costly homework sites as well. “OpenStax has partnerships with online homework providers such as Sapling Learning and WebAssign,” Nicholson explains, “These partners, called Allies, provide optional, lowcost additional resources that

integrate with OpenStax books.” If these partnerships are utilized by instructors, they allow students not only access to the free online content, but also allows them to be able to submit homework online. All this without students, who are already on a tight budget, having SEE

OPENSTAX, PAGE 3


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