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Orange and White game ends with White team victory
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Debate over 3-D legitimacy still raging
Monday, April 18, 2011 Issue 62
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Mother, son turn college into family affair Years after dropping out, mother joins son in return to college in pursuit of degree Jamison Lanum Staff Writer Only one class stands between a local mom and her bachelor’s degree this May. “I’ve got about a month left, as long as I pass Spanish,” Connie Mroz, senior in history, said. For Mroz, a mother of three, earning a bachelor’s degree has been a long and obstacle-laden journey. It began with her flunking out of the University of Arizona in 1980. Like many college freshmen, Mroz didn’t handle her new responsibilities well. “I didn’t take my studies seriously,” Mroz said. “Too much partying, too much beer.” After flunking out, Mroz moved from Tuscon, Ariz., back home to Phoenix and attended Glendale Community College. While working and going to school full time, Mroz completed her associate degree in 1984. “I got my A.A. in secondary education and never used it,” she said. “It was the degree with the least amount of math. You’re either a math or a words person. I’m definitely words.” In 1985, Mroz married and started a family. Any thoughts of furthering her education were placed on the backburner for the time, but three kids and more than two decades later, Mroz decided it was time to go back. “I started at Pellissippi, taking statistics in the fall of 2006,” she said. “In the spring of 2007, I started at UT. I was working full time, bi-schooling and was a full-time mom.” Although Mroz started back as a junior, she progressed slowly at first, taking as many courses as she could while still juggling multiple responsibilities. In 2009, Mroz finally traded her full-time job for a student assistantship in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Department, allowing her to concentrate fully on school. “I knew that I should probably finish up my degree, because that would be my future,” Mroz said. “With a degree I could get a better job. Also, once the last one was out of the house, I didn’t want to go, ‘Now what do I do with my life?’” All of Mroz’s children attended Karns High School and
“
I’m a real stick in the mud. As the oldest, I have a type-A
personality, so I feel like I have to
prove myself. There’s different paths in life, and I took the one that went straight through school.
– Aaron Sachs, master’s student in the college of Communications and Information, on how his college experience differs from his mother’s
”
are now currently attending college. Aaron Sachs, the oldest, is a second-year master’s student in the College of Communication and Information here at UT. “I was too busy to think about it when she started doing it when I was in high school,” Sachs said. “At that point I was working 30 hours a week at Chick-fil-A, playing on the worship team at church and carting my siblings around.”
Sachs didn’t encounter as many obstacles during his undergraduate studies at Berea College, where he double majored in German and speech communication, as his mother had. “I’m a real stick in the mud,” Sachs said. “As the oldest, I have a type-A personality, so I feel like I have to prove myself. There’s different paths in life, and I took the one that went straight through school.” Although Sachs doesn’t know exactly what he will do with his master’s degree, like his mom, he understands the importance of having one and that it offers him more opportunities in the job market. “The degree has been more of a safe haven for me more than anything,” Sachs said. Mroz said she made sure her son wouldn’t be embarrassed with her on campus. “When I found out that Aaron was doing his master’s here, I told him I will not yell across campus, ‘Mommy loves you Aaron,’” she said. “(She’s) come awfully close,” Sachs said. Sachs also owns his own social media firm, called Symply Social, which specializes in managing a company’s online presence and community. “He’s an overachiever,” Mroz said. Mroz has achieved much herself, as she’s overcome her freshman-year blunders, making the dean’s list last spring. Despite their different methods in navigating through college, mother and son have their similarities. “I’m definitely my mom’s child,” Sachs said. “We’re very driven, very purposeful,” Mroz said. “Don’t tell us we can’t do it, or we’ll prove you otherwise.” Sachs, who recently celebrated his one-month wedding anniversary, is considering pursuing his doctorate after he graduates this August. “I wish he would,” Mroz said. “He’s so good at it. He’s like me. He’s able to do 10,000 things at one time.” “I’m going to stop that one of these days,” Sachs said.
North Carolina blasted by tornadoes Associated Press RALEIGH, N.C. — Rescue crews searched for survivors in wind-blasted landscapes Sunday in North Carolina, the state hardest hit by a storm system that spawned dozens of tornadoes from Oklahoma to Virginia and left dozens dead. The spring storm, North Carolina’s deadliest in two decades, spun off 62 tornadoes in that state alone Saturday night. Eleven people were confirmed dead in rural Bertie County, county manager Zee Lamb said. Another four were confirmed dead in Bladen County, bringing the state’s death toll to at least 21. Deaths reported by officials in five other states brought the U.S. toll to 45. In the capital city of Raleigh, three family members died in a mobile home park, said Wake County spokeswoman Sarah Williamson-Baker. At that trailer park, residents lined up outside Sunday and asked police guarding the area when they might get back in. Peggy Mosley, 54, who has lived in the park for 25 years, said she was prepared when the storm bore down on the trailer park. She gathered small pillows and other material and hunkered down in her small bathroom. “I went and got into my small bathroom and just sat in there and cried and prayed until it was over,” Mosley said. Farther up the street, Tara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon Angelina McCaizie was also among those hoping to get Katelyn Hasse, junior in nuclear engineering, kicks a plank held by Jacob Arbital, sophomore in environmental back to their homes. She said she had been cooking science, during the International Festival in the UC Plaza on Friday, April 15.
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when she saw the winds and rain pick up. She grabbed her children, nephew and brother and brought them into the kitchen, where everyone ducked until the storm passed. When the storm was over, McCaizie, her husband and her brother went outside to check on neighbors. She said she saw several people bleeding and others with broken bones. McCaizie also said one resident ran up to her shouting, “Please help me! Please help me! I need 911.” “It was horrible,” McCaizie said. Gov. Beverly Perdue said Sunday that state emergency management officials told her more than 20 were killed by the storms in North Carolina. However, the far-flung damage made it difficult to confirm the total number of deaths. The emergency management agency said it had reports of 22 fatalities, and media outlets and government agency tallies did not all match. The National Weather Service said 23 died in the state, including one in Johnston County, but an emergency management chief there told The Associated Press nobody died in that area. The storm claimed its first lives Thursday night in Oklahoma, then roared through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Authorities have said seven died in Arkansas; seven in Alabama; two in Oklahoma; and one in Mississippi. In Virginia, local emergency officials reported seven storm-related deaths, said Virginia Department of Emergency Management spokesman Bob Spieldenner.