KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / MONDAY, AUGUST 16.2010 / NEWS
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CAMPUS
Pledge encourages sustainable habits
KANSAS FILE PH.
Garrett Rainbow, a senior from Larned, breaks down a cardboard box last year as part of the KU Recycle program behind Corbin residence hall. The Center for Sustainability is asking students to take a sustainability lesson this week.
BY SAMANTHA COLLINS
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
scollins@kansan.com
The Center for Sustainability is using Hawk Week to get an early start on promoting eco-friendly habits throughout campus, which includes a sustainability pledge.
"It's asking students to commit to some specific behaviors and then also along with that we'll also provide incentives for them to do that," Jeff Severin, director of the center, said. "It really focuses on reducing waste."
The pledge kicked off at Unionfest Sunday when the center handed out steel water bottles and will continue tonight at the ice cream social at the Adams Alumni Center with free, reusable shopping bags. The center will wrap up its efforts to promote the R's — reduce, reuse, recycle — Thursday, when it will pass out cloth napkins at the back-to-school barbecue at Mrs. E's and more steel water bottles during Rock the Rec.
"The whole idea is to reach out to students to teach them ways to reduce waste in general," Severin said.
Mahleea Satomi, coordinator of Environs, said that living more sustainably can be as easy as turning off the lights when leaving a room. Environs is a student group devoted to promoting environmental issues and awareness around campus.
"It is our responsibility to keep our environment, the place that we call home, in a healthy condition
for future generations to come," Satomi, a junior from Lawrence, said.
She said another way to conserve was to reduce the amount of water a student uses. An easy way to do this is to take shorter showers and turn off the water while brushing teeth. Satomi said students should also recycle, something Environs helped promote by starting the first recycling program at the University in 1988.
Seth Macchi, a sophomore from Topeka, works for the
Environmental Stewardship Program, which took over responsibility for the recycling on campus in 1996. He said recycling benefited many people and that everyone should recycle.
"Basically, there are so many locations on campus that students should never have to throw a recyclable item in the trash," Macchi said. "If you know you can do something simple that saves the world a little at a time, what's stopping you?"
Students can easily recycle glass,
plastic, cardboard, white and colored paper, and aluminum cans at the recycling bins scattered around campus.
"It's a way of rethinking of your own personal habits and thinking about the little things that may not seem very important in the grand scheme," Severin said. "But if you add up those things for over 30,000 students on campus then the accumulated effect is really impactful."
McMess
Edited by Dana Meredith
Jessica Janasz/KANSAN
Construction crews demolish McDonalds, 901 West 23rd St., Aug. 9. The building, which opened in 1970, was Lawrence's first McDonald's location. A new McDonalds will open on the same lot. Jessica Zanas/RKSMA
PSYCHOLOGY
Study: Oldest children show higher aptitude
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
MELVILLE, N.Y. — An Adelphi University student's research that found firstborns score higher on intelligence while younger siblings often get better grades drew some attention at a national psychologist's convention in San Diego this week. But for the researcher, Tiffany Frank, 26, it was personal.
"My interest in because I have an older sister who's very smart," she said of elder sister Samara, the first-born. "I felt no matter how hard I worked, I wasn't as smart as her," said Frank, the youngest of three, who is pursuing a doctorate in psychology at Adelphi.
"My interest in this started
Frank spoke delivered her
Frank began the study eight years ago, while a junior at the high school. She was a semifinalist for the research in the 2002 Intel science competition. That research formed the basis of her current study.
the firstborn scored highest on the national Iowa Test of Basic Skills, suggesting a higher level of aptitude, younger siblings had higher grade-point averages.
paper at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in San Diego.
"We were really surprised that the first-born came out with higher intelligence, but the later-born worked harder and had higher GPAs," Frank said. "You would think the firstborn would have higher grades."
"The first-born came out with higher intelligence,but the later-born worked harder and had higher GPAs."
Her research on 90 pairs of siblings at Lawrence High School on Long Island found that while
TIFFANY FRANK Researcher
Her study
differs from some of the myriad birth-order literature in its methodology, which focuses on the intelligence, achievement and personality of a sibling within families. Other studies have looked at unrelated random people and
The second part of the study, conducted by Frank's young co-author Hannah Turenshine, focused on sibling personalities, concluding that younger siblings were more extroverted than the firstborn, a finding at odds with some previous research. Turenshine, 18, of North Woodmere, N.Y., said that difference could be the result of differing definitions of "extro-
focused on their achievements based on their birth order, she said.
vert."
The 76 different pairs of siblings were each given surveys to assess their personalities. Resulting comparisons showed younger siblings were "more sincere, more emotional, more sentimental, more socially bold," said Turenshine, who graduated from Lawrence High this year and is headed to Binghamton University. Firstborns tended "to have stronger perfectionist tendencies, and were "more fair."
ADMINISTRATION
Technology fee of $10 per credit hour included
BY STEPHEN MONTEMAYOR smontemayor@kansan.com
While some lament the rising costs of higher education, leaders at the University of Kansas call the recent tuition increase and new technology fee necessary.
"I think it's unfortunate, but I think it's absolutely necessary to sustain services to keep our professors here teaching our courses and to keep the top researchers from around the world coming to this institution." Student Body President Michael Wade Smith, a senior from Goodland, said.
With a 6-3 vote on June 24, the Kansas Board of Regents approved the University's latest proposal for tuition increase. Costs per credit hour will increase between 5.2 and 9.2 percent for students without a tuition compact. The University cites more than $40 million in budget cuts and unfunded mandates for the measure's necessity.
Included in the approved proposal was the addition of a $10-percredit-hour technology fee. Also, the University will use $2.5 million of federal stimulus funds for one time $1,000 Jayhawk Assistance Grants.
Regents Chair Garry Scherrer was one of the three votes against the proposal. Scherrer said that while he understood the University's need for more financial resources, he thinks that state universities are beginning to make opportunities for higher education too expensive.
"This is actually a very historic year because this is the first time in the history of the state of Kansas that students are actually paying more for higher education than the state is contributing to it." Scherrer said. "And I don't believe that is what the people of this state want."
Jack Martin, a University spokesman, said that those who drafted the proposal considered student needs, the state's budget situation and how the University's education costs compared with others.
"The main thing we're doing right now in this budget environment is focusing on core student services, classes that students need to graduate on time." Martin said.
The University has said that 45 percent of students will see no change in tuition. These are students that entered into the KU Four-Year Tuition Compact, a program for first-time freshmen that fixes their tuition rate for four years.
Every year, the Tuition Advisory Committee makes a recommendation to the chancellor and provost on what tuition should be. The chancellor takes the proposal to the Board of Regents if it is approved.
If the state does not increase the University's budget, both Scherrer and Smith expect tuition increases to continue.
"We're at a place where our increase was just a catch up move and we're trying to get close to where we should be," Smith said. "But there's no way with the millions of millions of dollars of cuts that we took that we can get up without taxing our students 30 percent on top of their tuition, which just isn't an option for KU. We all know that."
However, Scherrier is wary of the message that continuous tuition
Below are the following changes in tuition for the 2010-2011 school year:
Standard Tuition:
Undergraduate residents: Tuition increases from $218.90 to $228.90 per credit hour (4.6 percent). With the $10 technology fee added, total tuition becomes $238.90 (9.1 percent).
Graduate residents: Tuition increases from $270.50 to $285.50 (5.5 percent). With technology fee added, total becomes $295.50 (9.2 percent).
Undergraduate non-resident: Tuition increases from $575 to $595 (3.5 percent). With technology fee added, total becomes $605 (5.2 percent).
Graduate nonresident Tuition increases from $646.25 to $681.25 (5.4 percent). With technology fee added, total becomes $691.25 (7 percent).
New Compact Tuition Rates for Fiscal Year 2011- 2014
Undergraduate Resident: Increases from $245.30 to $252.50 (2.9 percent). With technology fee added, total becomes $262.50 (7 percent).
- Undergraduate
Nonresident: Increases from $644.25 to $679.35 (5.4 percent). With technology fee added, total becomes 689.35 (7 percent).
Student fee increases going into effect this year
Student Senate approved in April the following student fee increases:
A $4 increase in the Student Health Fee that represents a $3 increase in operations and a $1 increase in Counseling and Psychological Services.
A $2.60 increase in the Campus Transportation fee represents a $2.25 increase in operations and a 35 cent increase for SafeRide/SafeBus.
■ The Newspaper Readership Fee increases from $3.75 to $4.45 to include the $1.70 transferred from the Student Media Fee. The $1.70 represents what is now being labeled a subscription fee for The University Daily Kansan.
increases sends to students.
“If the legislature won't do its part and refuses to give adequate funding, I suppose that realistically higher tuitions are going to be the path we have to continue down.” Scherrer said. “But that path means that we're going to start telling people that it's not your talent that gets you into a university, it's your ability to pay and, frankly, that's not the kind of state I want to go in. If people have the ability to go and perform well at a university, the state ought to make sure they get that opportunity or at least share more of the costs of it.”
Edited by Sean Tokarz