Freshmen move into Res Halls, apartments PAGE 11
From war to the chessboard PAGE 13
the Mercury
VOLUME XXXI, NO. 11
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF UTD
AUGUST 22, 2011
Go online >> The Mercury website is getting a new look. Check it out at www.utdmercury.com
Student enrollment continues to climb NADA ALASMI Mercury Staff
UTD is poised to break yet another student enrollment record. There will be about 18,400 students enrolled at UTD in fall 2011, according to projections by the Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis, or OSPA. The enrollment growth of about 1,000 more students marks a 7 percent increase from fall 2010.
“Even though there are very few days left until classes begin, historically many new students enroll in the last few days,” said Lawrence Redlinger, OSPA executive director, in an email to The Mercury. “If historical trends repeat themselves, enrollment could reach 18,750 (students this fall).” In the past, enrollment at UTD has followed a pattern of about three years of rapid growth (at 5 percent or more), followed by seven years of slow growth (less than 5 percent per year), accord-
ing to information from the OSPA. UTD should, on average, grow at a rate of 5 percent per year for the next eight or nine years, Redlinger said. For the first time in UTD’s history, a large growth in enrollment is expected to continue not for only three years, but for an entire decade. He also added that by 2020, enrollment should be at least 25,000 students.
see ENROLLMENT page 7
AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF
Overcrowded housing Temp housing requests at all-time high
NADA ALASMI Mercury Staff
students. In an effort to cope with the situation, Doug Eckel, associate dean in the School of Management, asked for help with temporarily housing about 100 Chinese, Taiwanese and Indian students in an email to all faculty, staff and students on Aug. 11. Ten students and faculty members responded to the email within
Lot J, located near the Activity Center, lost more than 25 parking spaces when it was repainted on August 10, according to information from Paul Smith, Parking and Transportation supervisor. The gold spaces, which Smith said were used by students in the School of Management, or SOM, were “moved” to the SOM’s lots and replaced by 14 purple, 10 orange, three green and nine handicap parking spaces, Smith said. These purple and orange spaces were added to replace Lot F, which will be demolished along with UTD’s old bookstore, to make way for the Arts and Technology building. Repainting will also take place in the parking lots near the SOM — lots Q, M-North, M-East and the new M-West, which is yet to open. Currently these lots are permit-type segregated: Lot Q and MNorth, near the SOM side doors, are for purple and orange permits and lot M-East near the front entrance is for orange and gold per-
see HOUSING page 13
see PARKING page 7
ANWESHA BHATTACHARJEE Mercury Staff
Two major international student organizations are struggling to handle a 33 percent increase in temporary housing requests from new students this fall, resulting in a dearth of shortterm accommodation for the new students. Joyee Gao, president of the Friendship Association of Chinese Students and Scholars, or FACSS, said their website had received more than 400 requests from incoming Chinese students for airport pick-ups and temporary housing. Meanwhile, the Indian Students Association, or ISA, has received close to 300 similar requests for fall 2011, said computer science graduate student and ISA volunteer Lakshmikanthan Vijayaraghavam. Since some schools had department orientations starting Aug. 16, many students arrived early in order to attend. However, most of the onand off- campus move-in dates are in late August or September, so these students need temporary accommo-
Parking changes at SOM
AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF
Indian students arrive at the DFW International Airport on Aug. 14. Many students coming from overseas must wait until the end of August to move into their apartments. Meanwhile, a record total of 700 international students have requested short-term accomodations.
dation for 15 to 20 days until they can move in to their own apartments. Jiayi Liu, Accounting & Information Management graduate student and a volunteer with FACSS, said their organization has two main ways to accommodate the new students temporarily. “The first resource is our students from previous years who have already settled down and have an apartment,” Liu said. “The other resource (are the
Losing the training wheels
local churches), which have helped us a lot — they pick up students from the airport and provide temporary accommodation to the new students.” The high demand for temporary housing keeps in line with UTD’s increasing international student enrollment. More than 1,300 international students were expected to attend the six international student orientations in August, which is a 40 percent increase over last year’s number of 959
New ATEC complex coming SHANE DAMICO Editor-in-Chief
BEN HAWKINS/STAFF
Forty special needs children attended the Lose the Training Wheels camp at UTD, hosted by the Down Syndrome Guild of Dallas, which took place Aug. 8-12.
This fall Arts & Technology students will file into one of the five classrooms available to them from sunrise until after sunset; but, as soon as fall 2013 ATEC students will have one of the largest buildings on campus to call their home. Construction has begun on a $60.5 million, 150,000-square-foot complex intended to primarily house ATEC and Visual Arts students in response to the programs’ significant growth. The new ATEC facility will cover roughly twice the real estate of the Student Services Building and will be built between the McDermott Library and School of Management building, where the on-campus bookstore was formerly located. Richard Dempsey, associate vice president for Business Affairs, said the ATEC program is an exciting development that the university is eager to highlight. “The whole program has grown
very rapidly,” Dempsey said. “But the (current ATEC) building just doesn’t work at all. Every time I (visit) there are people sitting around the halls.” Thomas Linehan, head of the ATEC program, said classes are currently scheduled from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. to compensate for the lack of classroom space, and research labs are even harder to come by. “One of the biggest problems we have is that because we consume so much of our equipment and software with classroom-based instruction it’s hard for the students to get in and work independently,” Linehan said. “We have a small lab that we call our ‘kitchen lab’ now where students can come in any time and work, but we just don’t have the resources that we need because we’re growing every single year at a pace that I’m going to need a couple more classrooms before the new building is even ready in order to survive.” Once the ATEC complex is complete, students will have access to multiple small research labs.
BY THE NUMBERS
• $60.5 million total project cost • 150,000 square feet • 1,200 seat lecture hall • Broke ground August 2011 • Estimated completion date of fall 2013 Each lab will feature a modular table and chair setup with electrical outlets installed into the floor to assist with custom layouts within the room, Linehan said. Many of the labs will include state of the art hardware and software preinstalled, he said. In addition to the smaller free-toaccess labs, larger, exclusive research space will also be built to support
see ATEC page 7