The Completion of a Past Journey

To begin, this has truly been a rewarding class experience and I often find myself bragging to others about the class format, discussions, and new knowledge I gain each week from Sparky and my peers. I always enjoy the spring semester because it warms up, scholars get to march across the stage, and it seems shorter than the fall semester. I was attracted to this class from past reviews of other classmates. I had never had an interaction with Sparky, but everyone at Ole Miss knows his name. Interestingly I decided I would take this course to learn more about the topics in the profession and also at Ole Miss. Like Rachel, I learn better from class formats such as this one because its more than covering specific topics related to Student Affairs, but engaging in intellectual conversations. The atmosphere is always relaxing and pleasant, the type of class that you don't mind attending after a long day of work. In 2008, I set out to obtain my Master's degree in Higher Education/Student Personnel, a journey I was nervous and optimistic about all at once. As I reflect back, I can say, I have completed a past journey that has provided me with so many rewarding experiences with few challenges that I am very proud of.

This class introduced me to personal blogging and I must admit, it saves paper! Go Green... We first discussed today's college student and the many issues and differences they bring to the college campus. Like many of us, we all fall into the category of the Millennial's who are very much interested in all types of technology and social networking. Secondly, my blog concerning the due process of a Social Work student reinforced the information I learned from the Law in Higher Education course I took last semester. We all have been affected by the acts of violence that have taken place on college campuses across the nation over the last decade, even if we did not have any personal ties with any of the victims. Next, discussing restorative justice programs allowed me to think back on the social work program here at Ole Miss and how counseling and working to keep student offenders in school while having them recognize how they affected their victim(s) was interesting and informative. In addition, I used the topic to create a PowerPoint presentation in Contemporary Issues this semester. The conversations we had about speech restrictions was impressive because of the stories that Sparky told about his past experiences. Another hot topic we discussed was drug use on campus, which led to my discussion and some of my peers regarding medical marijuana and how campus officials and states will have to make important decisions in legalizing the drug to students who have doctor prescriptions. Two weeks ago Ole Miss and the nation celebrated "Green Week." My discussion was tailored to article regarding campus sustainability rankings. Finally, we discussed the transformation of the campus union/student center and viewed many different institutions new unions/centers and saw ways that they allocated funding through donations and student fees to fund the projects. Additionally, we discussed how unions/centers boost enrollment with hopes that Ole Miss will have a new union in a few years to come.

In sum, I have enjoyed interacting with my peers and listening to Sparky wonderful stories that have enlightened my knowledge of Topics in Student Affairs and the history of Ole Miss. I would recommend this class to anyone as it was recommended to me and I hope that it will be a model for other higher education courses in the future. It is definitely a different way to teach a class, while keeping students engaged and interested in the discussions. I wish all of you much success in your future endeavors and I have really enjoyed the class and my tenure at Ole Miss as a student. I look forward to touching the lives of others that I come in contact with and I plan to retire from this profession that I am very passionate about and love.

State of the Union

Has any American college not yet built a new student union? If so, it is probably interviewing architects at this moment. All across the country, from Bowdoin to Pomona, colleges are scrambling to renovate, expand, or replace aging student unions, with their battered billiard tables and subterranean TV lounges. The student union craze is upon us, and not even the stormy economy seems able to slow its eager advance.

The modern student union is a versatile breed. It might be a sprawling creation, lik the $75-million, 330,000 square-foot leviathan at the UMass at Boston http://www.umb.edu/campuscenter/ . Or a restrained and subtle affair, like the taut, 50,000 square-foot-building at Sweet Briar College, which cost only about $14-million http://www.dining.sbc.edu/p-index.html . But large or small, it is certain to contain a multistory atrium, cafe seating, and the obligatory food court.

History
This is not the first time that a new building type has spread from campus to campus. After the Civil War came a great wave of memorial auditioriums, built to honor fallen classmates. The 1920s clamored for football stadiums. Thse earlier booms were prompted by sweeping changes in the nature of student life and alumni identity. Our era-for better or worse- has embraced the student union. It speaks of our time...

Today
The essence of the modern student union is to be a recruiting instrument, a fact that pardons its many infelicities: its self-consciousness, its nervous unctuousness, its relentless transparency. It its character is shaped by the world of commerical architecture, that is because it is itself an advertisement. It is the principal highlight of the standard college tour, along with the fitness center. And it communicates exceptionally well. Directors of admissions note that a quick meal in the student center conveys more information about life at a college, and with more credibility, than the lengthiest formal presentation. There the visitor can observe at a glance how students act and interact, how they dress, their relative stress level, and how they relate to their professors.

The Modern Student Center
The modern student union also expresses startling changes in the nature of student life. Since the American campus was wired for computers, a process essentially completed a decade or so ago, studying is no longer a private affair of reading and typing, which involved prolonged and quiet concentration. Studying has become more intermittent, more gregarious, and more mobile. As workstations and terminals have been dispersed across the campus, the clear hierarchy between public and private spaces has dissolved. That, too, is written across the eloquent face of the modern student union - hospitable, industrious, and somewhat prone to insomnia. Smith College's new campus center is a splendid example of the type, a sinuous viaduct with glazed walls and skylight along its meandering spine http://www.smith.edu/campuscenter/ . It is not so much a building as a roofed-over street. "Imaginedd as an en-route passage through the campus, the building is defined by various interconnecting paths that challenge the boundary between inside and outside," says a description on Smith's Web site.

Student-Designed
If the student center increasingly caters to consumers, then consumers have shaped them return. No academic building has ever been subjected to as much student involvement. Students have played crucial roles on building committees, as is apparent on the large number of Web sites devoted to student-center projects. Some campus cents can even be said to be student-designed, to the extent that their functions were democratically chosen. Smith college, for example, surveyed students about what services the campus center should offer. The highest vote-getter was an ATM machine, far outstripping the bookstore, convenience store, and performance space that were the closest contenders.

The Future
The student-center building boom, at a conservative estimate, has already consumed several billion dollars. More will be spent in the coming years, recession or no recession, for those brash buildings have become indispensable. They bring to the staid campus all that is vital about commercial architecture: its energy, newness, and wide-awake readiness to face the demands of the present. But they bring, alas, the weaknesses of commercial architecture as well - superficiality, flimsiness, and a very limited shelf life. In their very swagger is a cringing insecurity, which is foreign to the plodding and deliberate way that campuses used to grow. The new student cente is a lovely object, and it speaks with unerring honesty about the college today.

http://www.chronicle.come/article/Forget-Classrooms-How-Big-/35303

Green Rankings Validity

In a recent article by The Chronicle of Higher Education, colleges and universities have become frustrated with green rankings and has pushed them to develop their own.

Colleges have been subjected to all sorts of ratings, rankings, and grades on their green sensibilities in recent years—and not all of them have been welcome. Sustainability directors increasingly find themselves filling out surveys from organizations like the Sustainable Endowments Institute, Sierra magazine, and the Princeton Review, each with its own twist on questions about energy use, mass transit, water conservation, and so on. The data collection is becoming a real burden, they say.

Now, in a recent letter to colleges, the Sustainable Endowments Institute has floated a proposal: How would you like to pay $700 for the pleasure of filling out a survey? That money would help the institute render a grade—it could be an A-minus, or maybe a D-plus—for its highly publicized College Sustainability Report Card.

These independent rating systems become more frustrating for administrators when their colleges get dismal scores—and it's not always clear how those scores are calculated. Two years ago, a researcher at Sierra revealed to The Chronicle that the magazine's ratings were assigned somewhat haphazardly, based on the impressions of staff members. While the magazine's editors say they have beefed up their methodology, Marian Brown, special assistant to the provost for sustainability at Ithaca, says she still wonders how those data might be graded or fairly compared against other colleges'. For example, the Sierra survey asks how many students drive to campus in cars.

"Great question," Ms. Brown says, "but I don't know if you figure out how meaningful that is if you're in an urban setting or a rural campus like ours. How is that percentage useful for anyone to know?"

All of those green ratings look even less enticing now that colleges have come up with their own rating system through the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, better known as Stars, made its official debut three months ago and already has about 130 institutions participating. It was developed by college sustainability experts through an extensive, collaborative process —in part to allow colleges to compare their progress with that of their peers, but also to take the place of the various sustainability ratings that have popped up in recent years. A Stars evaluation is valid for three years; Stars organizers say that timeline is meant to ease the pressure of data collection.

"From the way I see it, it's time for all of us to move on to Stars," says Gioia Thompson, sustainability director at the University of Vermont. She balks at the idea of paying for the SEI survey, which can take up to a week of her time to complete.

It's possible that independent rating systems like SEI bring a peculiar public pressure that forces change. The Stars system was conceived as a positive evaluation of college sustainability. Although the colleges will get an honest evaluation of their performance, which will be publicly available, the system won't engage in publicizing dismal scores for colleges that are coming up short, says Meghan Fay Zahniser, who manages the Stars program for AASHE.

That is one role that the Sustainable Endowments Institute does not shy away from. The institute has handed out a good number of C's, D's, and F's on its College Sustainability Report Card. Those scores have sometimes been picked up by newspaper columnists and environmental advocates, who then blast the poor-scoring colleges for slacking.

An interesting project would be to have a student led project with higher education students in conducting an assessment of Ole Miss by working with the Office of Sustainability and perhaps creating a student organization. (I am unaware if we have one currently). It is absurd to pay $700 to participate in a survey as many of the administrators also mentioned in the article, which should be conversely; especially when post-secondary institutions have been receiving C's, D's, and F's on their report card. I think it is a great idea for institutions to focus on saving energy especially when building new buildings. However, I am curious to know how many new facilities will be created with budget deficits institutions are facing. What are some initiatives Ole Miss is working on to produce a greener campus? The signs are admirable that hang from the poles, but are we as students, faculty, administrators, faculty, and staff doing enough? Check out the schedule of events for next week's Green Week @ Ole Miss

http://www.olemiss.edu/green/green_week.html

This article can be found at http://chronicle.com/article/Frustration-With-Green-Rank/65014/