March 20, 2023
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THE MERCURY
ECS COMPLAINTS: WHO IS TO BLAME? Dean and students paint a complex picture of advising problem that includes high caseloads and staff shortages MARTIN FRIEDENTHAL Mercury Staff
The Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, or ECS, is one of UTD’s largest and most wellknown academic schools, ranked No. 4 in Texas for engineering by The College Pod. However, in recent years, ECS has grappled with problems resulting from unprecedented surges in undergraduate enrollment and budget constraints. Students who feel the school isn’t meeting their needs have mentioned a range of complaints. The Mercury polled students on their experiences with ECS advisors and found that out of a sample size of 97 students, 49% said a typical advisor response time was a couple of weeks, and 22% said a couple months. 30% of respondents said they had been assigned four or more advisors during their time in ECS. “Advising has this terrible pattern of having people just [go] completely missing, having advisors not doing their job when they respond, and that’s affected me and a whole bunch of students every registration cycle,” computer science junior Jocelyn Heckenkamp said. When asked to rate how satisfied they were with their advising experience on a scale from zero to 10, 36% of students gave their experience a zero out of 10, with only one respondent giving a 10 out of 10. In a Jan. 23 interview with The Mer-
cury, ECS Dean Stephanie G. Adams, who considers herself a “student-centered dean,” addressed some of these concerns. “There’s a perfect storm happening,” Adams said. Between 2008 and 2021, ECS grew by 6,027 students, which makes it a third of UTD’s undergraduate population based on numbers from The American Society for Engineering Education. As of February 2023, ECS has 6,792 undergraduates, with a student-to-advisor ratio of 566:1. The National Academic Advising Association, or NACADA, recommends an average caseload of 296:1. According to Adams, four-year public colleges should aim for 260:1. For comparison, in fall 2021, UT Arlington’s College of Engineering had an undergraduate student-to-advisor ratio of 260:1 for a population of 5,201, according to Joe Carpenter, UTA’s chief communications officer. Within UTD, ECS has the highest undergraduate student-to-advisor ratio, based on data from Administrative Project Coordinator Vanessa Balderrama. When Adams became ECS dean in August 2019, the school had only 12 advisors and two assistant directors of advising, compared to the 23 advisors they would need to meet NACADA’s 296:1 recommended ratio. At the time of the interview, ECS had only 11 permanent advisors and two temporary
advisors. “I’ve been trying every chance I get to add more advisors,” Adams said. “There’s gonna be more complaints if you have more students.” Mechanical engineering senior Kyle Settelmaier is an ECS student who said he had trouble communicating with advisors when he wanted to change his major from mathematics to mechanical engineering as a junior. “[It] was a bit of a nightmare, and nobody was able to help,” Settelmaier said. Settelmaier said he narrowly missed enrolling in a crucial prerequisite course when his degree plan had not been updated. By the time the advisor responded to his concerns over email, the class was full. Had it not been for a last-minute dropout, Settelmaier said he might have had to stay at UTD for another semester. Four survey respondents said that the actions or inactions of their advisors prevented them from enrolling in a class, as well as two survey respondents who said they were forced to delay their graduation and spend another semester at UTD. “It’s not the end of the world, but that’s [potentially] money down the drain for no reason,” Settelmaier said. Beyond the pandemic and natural turnover, external factors have compounded
SEE ECS, PAGE 5
OLUWASEUN ADEYEMI | MERCURY STAFF
OLUWASEUN ADEYEMI | MERCURY STAFF
UV residents face hot water outages TEJAL DHAN
Senate bills threaten DEI
Mercury Staff
VARSHITHA KORRAPOLU
Since the start of the spring semester, students residing in University Village have experienced unannounced hot water outages. Shreya Billa, a sophomore biology major and resident of UV Phase 8A, said that she experienced two hot water outages in spring 2023 with no warning. The outages typically lasted a day, with Housing working to quickly establish hot water again. “Maybe around 30 minutes to an hour after it starts, that's when I get an email that they're working on fixing it,” Billa said. The Mercury was in contact with three other Comets who were similarly affected by UV water outages. The topic has also been discussed through Reddit posts by UTD students. “I have heard about it affecting people in Phase 1, Phase 2 with the same problem,” Billa said. “Not like complete water going out, but the same hot water problem … in terms of my own phase, we have a group
Three Senate bills proposed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick could have serious implications on higher education institutions if they are passed in the legislative session. The three bills include Senate Bill 16 — Banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Higher Education, Senate Bill 17 – Banning Discriminatory “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) Policies in Higher Education and Senate Bill 18 – Eliminating Tenure at General Academic Institutions. If approved, SB 16 would prevent professors from teaching on CRT and other topics related to sex, gender, race, culture, and diversity in a formal academic setting. If approved, Senate Bill 17 will limit DEI offices at Texas universities. Antonio Ingram, an assistant counsel attorney at the NAACP Legal Fund, explained the magnitude of the impact these bills could have on diverse institutions of higher education. “These bills are going to have a dispropor-
Mercury Staff
KATHERYN HO | MERCURY STAFF
chat where people complain a bit about it.” Housing did not respond to a request for comment. Billa said that the outages did not happen last semester and have only been occurring during spring 2023. “Maybe if [Housing] focus[es] on developing some infrastructure or updating some structure that [is] needed to keep the hot water going, that could help as well, so it’s not a recurring problem,” Billa said.
tionate impact on increasing diversity in all its forms on college campuses,” Ingram said. “It’s really an attack on public education. UTD is so diverse. There's essentially plurality of racial diversity from Asian Americans, Latino Americans, African Americans, white Americans, are all learning from each other and in the classroom together. These sorts of bills are an attack on multiracial settings.” Currently, the DEI office at UTD has several committees and projects that promote diversity among student, professors and faculty in all fields. “There are various forms of bias that we are still struggling with in our country,” Ingram said. “DEI is not giving certain groups a pedestal. It’s remedying past forms of discrimination that are persisting. Think about STEM. We all know that women are underrepresented. And if you want to increase women in STEM, you have to have more women professors, you have to have
SEE BILLS, PAGE 5
ADITI MUNGALE | MERCURY STAFF
Editorial
Anti-DEI bill will harm all students if passed If Senate Bill 17 is up for debate, students must attend the public hearing to voice their disapproval A Senate Bill in committee — 88(R) SB 17 — could mean the end of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as we know it at UTD. If passed in its current state, SB 17 would strike down major resources such as the Gender Center and Multicultural Center and likely dissolve the DEI office as a whole. With UTD being the 14th most LGBT-friendly campus in the nation and one of the most ethnically diverse public universities in Texas, this bill would be detrimental to both students who use ODEI services and campus culture as a whole. And while it may be early in the session,
it’s critical that students keep an eye on the bill and prepare to fight it with public comment. SB 17, filed on March 10 by Sen. Brandon Creighton, would impose several new restrictions on all state-funded universities, including UTD. The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which includes the Galerstein Gender Center and Accessibility Center, would be disbanded. UTD would be unable to provide deferential treatment on the basis of race or ethnicity, which would impact Affirmative Action and other admissions and hiring practices. UTD
would not be allowed to consider diversity statements from employees or prospective students on the basis of their experience with prejudice or marginalization, which could affect personal statements on a variety of applications. The bill would also give the UT System Board of Regents more control over hiring and the ability to deny courses taught in the core curriculum. We should clarify the true purpose of DEI practices, which endorses of this bill do not seem to understand. The purpose of DEI is not to discriminate against the majority group, an idea Gov. Greg Abbott
hinted at in a memo arguing that DEI policies “favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others.” The purpose of DEI is to ensure a welcoming and inclusive campus to all students and to counter the long-standing discrimination that has contributed to cycles of inequity in marginalized communities. Even in 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the college enrollment rate for white Americans was 41%, while the enrollment rate for Black Americans was 36%. And according to the Hechinger Report, white students are two
and half times more likely to graduate than Black students at public universities. Despite this, in all applications for admission and employment, SB 17 would restrict UTD from considering the tangible hardships that people from marginalized groups experience on their journey to higher education. UTD would not be able to give preferential consideration to students “on the basis of the person’s unsolicited statement in support of an ideology described by Subdivision (1)(A).”
JACK SIERPUTOWSKI
FATIMAH AZEEM
MANYA BONDADA
TEJAL DHAN
SHRIYA VYASAM
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