To be a proud graduate, or not to be

Intro: While most graduating students experience a sense of “senioritis” during the last few weeks of the spring semester, Sheryl Saturnino remains humble. She continues to work through the rest of her classes and is keeping the thought of walking across the stage in the back of her mind. She did not feel the hype of the Grad Fair that took place in mid-February at the UAA bookstore. She also was not in a rush to order her graduation announcements and neglected to do so until recently. UAA’s Lizzy Abellera reports:

Saturnino, a senior majoring in Psychology, feels indifferent about participating in this year’s Commencement ceremony. Although she is qualified and encouraged to walk for graduation, Saturnino does not feel like a true graduate. This is because she does not technically finish her degree until the summer.

Melanie Donhauser, one of the Degree Certification Specialists at UAA’s Enrollment services, explains UAA graduation policy.

[CutID: Donhauser UAA policy.wav]
Time: 9s
Title: Donhauser UAA policy
Out-cue:] [“Summer graduates can participate in the [preceding] spring ceremony even if it’s before a student is actually done with his or her degree. [However,] a student must be within six credits of completion for their degree.”]

While this may be a good option for students, Saturnino just doesn’t feel proud to call herself a graduate. She has to finish two courses over the summer semester to finally obtain her degree in August.

[CutID: Saturnino not done.wav]
Time: 5s
Title: Saturnino not done
Out-cue:] [“It’s just a weird feeling knowing I’m not really done and the Commencement ceremony is celebrating students that have actually finished everything.”]

Camille Oliver, the special events manager and Commencement coordinator from University Advancement, says students who graduate over the summer will not have their name printed in this year’s commencement program. It will only contain the names of students from summer and fall 2010 semesters and spring 2011.

[CutID: Oliver program.wav]
Time: 4s
Title: Oliver program
Out-cue:] [“Students that technically finish their degree over this next summer will have their name printed on next year’s program.“]

Oliver assures that this will not affect a student’s participation in the actual ceremony in any way. Unfortunately, this is not a reassuring feeling for Saturnino. This makes her feel more at-edge about walking this spring.

Saturnino felt she had to cram everything in for the spring semester. UAA has only one Commencement ceremony in the year, which falls at the end of each spring semester. Other major universities have bi-annual celebrations, one for fall and one for spring. If Saturnino were to wait to walk until she finished her degree completely, she would have to wait until the spring Commencement ceremony of 2012. That’s about 9 months after she is finally done. Saturnino feels she just would not want to participate at all if she had to wait that long.

[CutID: Saturnino done.wav]
Time: 1s
Title: Saturnino done
Out-cue:] [“I would just want to be done with it.”]

Asia Beder is a recent fall graduate from Alaska Pacific University, which neighbors the UAA campus. She explains how her school had a separate Commencement ceremony last December to celebrate students that completed their degree that semester.

[CutID: Beder APU graduation.wav]
Time: 7s
Title: Beder graduation
Out-cue:] [“It’s nice having a celebration at the end of the semester you finish. The celebration was small and intimate but it gave a chance for each student to feel recognized.”]

Because of APU’s smaller ceremony in the fall, each student was able to deliver a 2-minute speech. Beder says this was a nice gesture to recognize the school’s graduates.

UAA’s Commencement Ceremony will take place on Sunday, May 1st at the Sullivan Arena at 3 pm. Students’ family and friends are encouraged to attend and support their UAA graduate.

Back-up for Blackboard

When Blackboard goes down, it's almost like granting an in-service day to students. Actually, this is more like a free-for-all happy hour. There hasn't been an entire day affected by this system being unavailable. However, instructors and students are impacted when working against strict deadlines during the very few hours it is down. These are deadlines for students to turn in assignments and deadlines for instructors to share pertinent information to the class.

Chris Martinez who works for Information Technology Services, better known as IT Services, assures that the department is on it once the system goes down. The phone calls and inquiries are endless.

Because of Blackboard's sporadic and unexpected times of shutting down, instructors have had to turn to different forms of web mediums such as social networking sites to use as alternatives. Students rely on Blackboard to get information about their classes and to turn assignments in. That's not to say that Blackboard has or will become obsolete, but that instructors and students should have options to turn to alternative resources. This is helpful when the source of class information delivered via web goes down, especially for distance education online courses.

Janson Jones, a professor from the English department, currently teaches two sections of his Advanced Technical Writing class online. In years past, he has turned to using Typepad to deliver class announcements and assignment information to students. Typepad is one of several blog services available that Jones links directly to Blackboard. When clicking on the course title from a student's Blackboard account, they are directed right to Jones's blog. He also sends the blog address to his student's e-mail just in case they need to access the information this way.

Jones doesn’t want to take a chance at being unavailable to his students. He uses Blackboard to record grades and make use of the discussion board. Even with using the discussion board, he warns students that Blackboard may act up while making their posts. Jones chooses to perform all other class functions outside of this system. He delivers assignments as attachments in his blog.

Crystal Shaw, a senior majoring in natural sciences, is annoyed when Blackboard goes down. She knows instructors who will not feel sympathetic toward students that don’t end up meeting the deadlines for assignments. Blackboard becoming unavailable in not an excuse. Granted, these instructors do not feel sympathetic because of the time allotted to complete these assignments. A student should not wait until the last minute to turn assignments in. Nonetheless, Shaw thinks students should not be punished for an entire system going down, especially when it is out of their hands.

Technology will continue to play an important and integrated role for teaching a class. Instructors and students should consider what options are available to communicate class work over the web. For more information, questions, or concerns contact UAA IT Services at 786-4646.

Feeling the weight of the waitlist

The University of Alaska Anchorage nursing program is biased. Two students from the School of Nursing admitted this when asked about the admission process. The term “biased” was the perfect description they came up with when conveying their experiences of applying and getting into the program.

Whether a student aims for the associate’s or bachelor’s degree in nursing, applying to this program may be one challenge. The second hurdle to overcome is highly talked about waiting list. What used to be a 12-month waiting period in the past to start the program has grown to a complete two-year halt in the degree plan.

Mary Grace Villasin, who considers herself to be in junior standing, applied to the nursing program in the summer of 2010. This is several months prior to the October 1 deadline for the fall semester. It wasn’t until the end of December 2010 when she finally received an acceptance letter. Evoked with joy to see “Congratulations” being the first word she read—her heart sunk when her eyes rolled over her start date: spring semester of year 2013.

The nursing program is highly competitive and accepts about 40 students per year for the bachelor’s option and 32 students a year for the associate’s plan. Because of this standstill in the degree program, students become waitlisted until they can start. This is due to the insufficient number of available nursing educators. There are very few instructors available, and they all teach year-round for both degree programs.

The admission process is strict. Kathy Smith, one of the program assistants for the nursing department recommends students to meet one-on-one with Marie Samson, the program’s Student Affairs Coordinator. Students may discuss with her what their options are after applying to the program and waiting for an answer.

All students are considered pre-nursing majors until being formerly accepted. All pre-major students must follow a specific course plan and obtain an exceptional grade point average to be set apart from other applicants.

Villasin explains how a student’s GPA plays a significant role when determining whether a student will rank high enough to be admitted into the program faster. Students can get “bumped up” into the program and can start a semester or two earlier if their GPA in their nursing prerequisite courses is good enough.

Villasin shares why she thinks the program is biased: she believes they tend to accept men that apply faster than others.

Carlo Sipin is a male nursing student who is in his third semester of the program. He agrees that the program is biased but not because he is a male.

During his first few semesters attending UAA, Sipin heavily stacked his nursing prerequisites of chemistry and biology courses and achieved a solid 3.5 GPA. He applied for the program in May 2009 while finishing up his last requirements. He received his acceptance letter in December 2009 and was able to start the program right away in January 2010.

Sipin doesn’t think it’s because he’s a male that got him in so quick, but because he was determined to get his pre-requisites completed fast and also got good grades. If anything, he believes the nursing program is biased because of the acceptance rate between a bachelor’s degree and an associate’s degree.

To Sipin, anyone can be accepted into the bachelor’s track and will eventually start the program—no matter what the wait may be. It upsets him that the associate’s track is more competitive and strict. He says they will deny students admission if they don’t meet the requirements. Sipin thinks this should be switched around.

Villasin added that students could apply for both the bachelors and associate’s track. She recalls a friend who applied for both and was accepted into the bachelor’s program, but was denied acceptance for the associate’s program.

Although Sipin didn’t experience the harsh reality of the waiting list like most students do, he sympathizes for the department saying that the wait is inevitable. With the limited number of teachers available, there’s not much that can be done to alleviate the delay for students.

Villasin, on the other hand, is angry about this waiting period she must endure. She thinks it’s tolerable for people that want to take the time off, but it’s unfair for determined students that just want to go and get their degree already.

As Sipin looks forward to obtaining his Bachelors of Science degree in Nursing in the next semester, Villasin is looking at what options she has available during her wait. She is looking at possibly doing a double major or earning a certificate in phlebotomy. She is also looking into other nursing programs out of state and may apply for admission at those schools because they don’t have a waiting list.

She hopes all of this wait will eventually pay off in the end, but she will unfortunately have to anticipate that feeling of accomplishment until August 2014—her expected graduation date.

Priority registration: yay or nay for UA students?

Starting on April 1st for the 2011 fall semester, the University of Alaska is implementing a priority registration system. This new process will permit students to register for their courses depending on their class standing. This will let graduate students and seniors take priority in picking their classes first.

With a new priority registration system, students can expect less traffic on the UA server when attempting to register for classes. This is especially useful for upperclassmen that are looking to fulfill those last few credits to complete their degree.

Crystal Shaw, a senior majoring in natural sciences, couldn’t feel any more positive about this change. She thinks it’s a good idea since upperclassmen are in more of a time-crunch trying to get into the classes they need to graduate.

A student’s worst nightmare on registration night is finally gaining access to UAOnline after many failed attempts, only to find that the class he or she needed is now full.

Of course there are several alternatives such as seeking approval from the instructor to be added to the waiting list. However, that’s just more of a hassle busy students do not have the patience to go through.

Most of the time students may just wait until the semester starts to be waitlisted in the course. Alternatively, they end up waiting to see if a student will drop and a spot to open up. That’s a big if.

Still, this is more run around that occurs for the student. For upperclassmen, it’s a heavy weight being placed on their shoulders if there’s a chance the class they need is unavailable. This priority registration system should help clear that inconvenience.

Shaw adds that most lowerclassmen are indecisive and are still trying to figure out what they want to do.

Zlata Sushchik, a senior majoring in business management, agrees. She thinks as a senior, it’s important to get first pick for classes to graduate. Some 100-level courses are full within the first five minutes. Sometimes, freshmen register for several classes and drop half of them within the first week. This is not fair to those striving to be in these classes.

Sharon Kim, a double-major in nursing and history, thinks otherwise. She doesn’t think it’s fair to implement what she thinks is “restrictive education” when every student at the university is equally paying for it.

For the most part—upperclassmen like what they see. There have been some suggestions to make an exception list for the lowerclassmen that want to register outside of their class standing. Some students are very determined and want to get ahead. This process would be similar to making exceptions on the maximum credits a student can take by filling out the credit-overload form.

Shaw adds that she feels for students who know what they want and are trying to take large loads to finish early. She believes most students wouldn’t put in the effort to turn in these types of documents to the Registrar if they weren’t serious about getting ahead.

A more detailed schedule and frequently asked questions can be found on the Registrar’s web page.

How to Involve Youth in Sustainability Programs

[Intro]
You may have heard the common phrase “today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders”. It is a concept that is believed by many Alaskan tribes. Rural communities want to focus on engaging youth to become future leaders for our state. It’s one thing for today’s youth to become involved with sustainability programs. It’s even better when they want to apply this experience to their future. University of Alaska Anchorage journalist Lizzy Abellera reports:

[Voicing]
Not many children or young adults typically look at environmental issues. If they do, it’s only because it’s a required assignment they must complete for school. At a young age, youth in our community should start to consider the actions they are making that may impact our environment. These decisions will affect them in the long run and acting now can give them exposure they need to open their eyes. Children and young adults under 17 years of age may receive many benefits if they start becoming involved now. Michelle Davis from the US Environmental Protection Agency expresses how she feels about this:

[Actualities]
Time: 6s
Title: Michelle on teens
“Sustainability programs help teens think about their tribe. They see the bigger picture and will apply these concepts for themselves and their future.”

[Voicing]
If youth activities are promoted now, they will have a likelihood of growing into leaders for Alaskan tribal organizations and communities. There are several local programs running that are good examples of where and how to start. Brenda Trefon, from the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, shares her advice on how she gets youth involved.

[Actualities]
Time: 5s
Title: Brenda asking for help
"Always ask for help and learn from others ... it’s amazing with how much work can be done in one day."

[Voicing]
An important concept to remember is that youth and other community members should re-introduce themselves as environmental workers when becoming involved. Since tribes and rural villages are so small, it's easy for someone to see you as one person. However, when you reintroduce yourself as an environmental worker, you are presenting yourself as someone different representing the community.

Many of these established programs work hand-in-hand together. Charlie Ess who represents the RurALCAP organization, shares his experience of working with youth.

[Actualities]
Time: 3s
Title: Charlie kids find stuff
"Kids just love to find stuff and they love to be involved.”

[Voicing]
Charlie talks about how they love to pick up things they find laying around. He tries his best to set a good example by being that person who picks up the can on the ground and throws it away.

[Actualities]
Time: 3s
Title: Charlie pick up can
"You are the best example there is for the kids... so go pick up a can."

[Voicing]
When organizations give youth a chance to become more involved in their community, they not only help out others but they are helping themselves out too. A common stereotype with youth is that all they eventually do is get themselves into trouble. They're troublemakers. They shouldn't be trusted. With the help of these programs giving them these opportunities to prove others wrong, they are helping to build and set goals for themselves, and to reach them.

Michelle likes to reflect on a saying she always heard her mom tell her long ago.

[Actualities]
Time: 3s
Title: Michelle trouble
"A teenager that is put to work is one that stays out of trouble".

[Voicing]
The power of youth should never be underestimated. They are capable of much more than we could imagine. AJ Salsoski, Community Development Supervisor at RurALCAP had his doubts of first working with youth.

[Actualities]
Time: 7s
Title: AJ employment opportunities
"There aren't a lot of employment opportunities for them in rural areas ... So getting youth involved gets their foot in the door and they get exposure to real job experience."

[Voicing]
Youth involvement in programs will continue to grow and be promoted within rural areas of the state. Several of these smaller projects have had much impact to become permanent, ongoing programs. Youth can enjoy the benefits of building their resume and engaging in employment opportunities -- all while helping to benefit their community.

My social media policy

Social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and blogs have become an integral part of everyday life for millions of people around the world. Social media is important when it comes to networking with individuals to promote news, services and events, and to look for and establish sources for stories.

There is a fine line between what will be acceptable for a journalist (or anyone else in the journalism/public communications industry) when using his or her own social media networking site. This fine line must be identified as a journalist who is representing an organization must adhere to these guidelines to ensure the reputation of an organization remains credible and unbiased.

First and foremost — you should do nothing that could undermine your credibility with the public, damage an organization's standing as an impartial source of news or otherwise jeopardize the organization's reputation.

• Recognize that everything you write or receive on a social media site is public. Anyone with access to the web can get access to your activity on social media sites. And regardless of how careful you are in trying to keep them separate, in your online activity, your professional life and your personal life overlap. You must remember that your professional life will take precedence in any given environment. You worked to establish a reputable name for yourself, now you must maintain that image.
  

• Use the highest level of privacy tools available to control access to your personal activity when appropriate, but don't let that make you complacent. It's just not that hard for someone to hack those tools and make public what you thought was private. A word of advice to anyone using social networking sites... if it's not okay to say it to your mom, it's probably not okay to say it online. More food for thought: don't say anything you know is inappropriate... ever.
  

• You should conduct yourself in social media forums with an eye to how your behavior or comments might appear if we were called upon to defend them as a news organization. In other words, don't behave any differently online than you would in any other public setting. It is our job to remained unbiased to our audience through our stories and this also applied to our commentaries. We need to remain a credible news source.
  

• While we strongly encourage linking to our organization's website, you may not repost the organization's copyrighted material to social networks without prior permission. For example, it is o.k. to link from your blog or Facebook profile to a story of yours on the organization's site, but you should not copy the full text or audio onto a personal site or Web page. This will only help us maintain the utmost professionalism through our organization and to keep it strictly business.
  

• Journalism should be conducted in the open, regardless of the platform. Just as you would do if you were working offline, you should identify yourself as an organization's journalist when you are working online. If you are acting as an organization's journalist, you must not use a pseudonym or misrepresent who you are. If you are acting in a personal capacity, you may use a screen name if that is allowed by the relevant forum.

• You should always explain to anyone who provides you information online how you intend to use the information you are gathering.

• When possible, clarify and confirm any information you collect online by later interviewing your online sources by phone or in person.

• While widely disseminated and reported, material gathered online can be just as inaccurate or untrustworthy as some material collected or received in more traditional ways. As always, consider and verify the source.

• You must not advocate for political or other polarizing issues online. This extends to joining online groups or using social media in any form (including your Facebook page or a personal blog) to express personal views on a political or other controversial issue that you could not write for the air or post on your organization's website.
  

• Your simple participation in some online groups could be seen to indicate that you endorse their views. Consider whether you can accomplish your purposes by just observing a group's activity, rather than becoming a member. If you do join, be clear that you've done so to seek information or story ideas. And if you "friend" or join a group representing one side of an issue, do so for a group representing the competing viewpoint, when reasonable to do so.

• Realize that social media communities have their own culture, etiquette and norms, and be respectful of them.

• If you are writing about meetings and gatherings at an organization— always ask first if the forum is on or off the record before distributing information or content about it.

And a final caution — when in doubt, consult with your editor.

Source information is copied from: NPR.org (I really liked their social media policy the best. I wanted to mimic a lot of what they stated in their own social media policy because it was very thorough and I felt it touched bases on many areas I would not have thought of on my own. I agreed with much of what they had to say and added my own rules on top of them for further clarification.)

Who knew media was now new media?

New media is on the fast-paced rise and there's no slowing it down. New forms of technology are constantly emerging and give consumers more of a reason to derive from the old school of journalism to adopt the new school of mobile media. What innovative techniques does Apple have up their sleeve and what will they come out with next? The way people currently receive their news may soon be replaced with touch-screen platforms such as the iPad. Is it possible for the printing press to become obsolete in the next ten years or so? As the current generation is becoming lost and consumed in new-age technology, current journalists hold the fate of the future of journalism in their hands.