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Show UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY Free fallin' Page 5 Logan, Utah • Campus Voice Since 1902 www.utahstatesman.com Monday, Sept. 26,2005 Enrollment down from last year Lousiana: Helicopters scour floodwaters Texas: People stream home as Rita falls short of fears BY A S H SCHILLER Stiff Writer Utah State University is bolstering its recruitment efforts both in and out of state in order to combat declining student enrollment. The latest university headcount is 23,128, a 780-student dip from the fall 2004 count of 23,908, according to numbers released earlier this year. "Everybody loses when enrollment is down," said Katie Nielsen, assistant director of recruitment in the Admissions Office. Enrollment funds the classroom and is also the basis for state funding. "Really, the future of the universty is based on enrollment," she said. Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies and Research Joyce Kinkead said there are many contributors to the drop, one being that 2004 had the lowest number of Utah high school graduates in 10 plus years. "There will be an upswing in the next few years, but the growth is largely in Hispanic students and other under-represented groups that are statistically less likely to attend college, requiring signihcant outreach to K-12 populations," Kinkead said. Enrollment of multicultural students at USU is starting to grow, said Moises Diaz, director of Multicultural Student Services. "The growth is modest, but it's there," he said. "If we've increased 3 or 4 percent, that's still favorable, especially in light of overall enrollment decreasing." Another contributor to low enrollment at USU is the increase in traditionally twoyear colleges now offering four-year degrees, Kinkead said. "The proliferation of programs has eroded our market share in the state," she said. The change of Ricks College into four-year Brigham Young University-Idaho has had an especially big impact on USU, Nielsen said. "Ricks was our main feeder school," she said. The decrease of students from Idaho has been tough on enrollment. Over the past three years, USU has lost more than 500 Idahoans, Kinkead said. She attributes the decline to both the increasing popularity of Brigham Young University-Idaho and House Bill 331, which requires an out-of-state student to have 60 credits or reside in Utah for three years before obtaining residency. USU student ambassador Kelsey Burns, a junior majoring in communicative disorders and deaf education, said she has noticed an increase in focus on Idaho recruitment. Efforts are more concentrated and USU President Stan Albrccht is getting involved in some of the open houses, she said. "He's taken a personal interest in getting out-of-state kids back," she said. "How many university presidents do you know who go out to the high schools?" USU is also working to diversify recruitment efforts beyond Utah and Idaho out to other Western states such as Texas, Alaska, and Illinois, Kinkead said. Nielsen said the admissions office is being more aggressive in its recruiting. The main focus now are multicultural, high-ability and out-of-state students, she said. Wider geographic areas of test scores are being purchased in order to find potential students. • ENROLLMENT See page 7 2 AP photo A GROUP OF MEN assist an elderly neighbor Saturday in Abbeville, La. The neighbor, George Readom, was physically unable to leave on his own as waters rose from Hurricane Rita. Picking up the pieces BY JULIA SILVERMAN The Associated Pre^b PERRY, La. - For the storm-shattered Gulf Coast, the images were all too familiar: Tiny fishing villages in splinters. Refrigerators and coffins bobbing in floodwaters. Helicopters and rescue boats making house-to-house searches of residents stranded on the rooftops. But as the misery wrought by Hurricane Rita came into clearer view - particularly in the hardto-reach marsh towns along the Texas-Louisiana line - the lasting signs that emerged a day after the storm's 120-mph landfall were of an epic evacuation that saved countless lives, and of destruction that fell short of the Katrina-sized fears. "As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after taking a helicopter tour Sunday. Even with nearly 1 million in the region without electricity, some coastal towns flooded to the rooftops and the prospect of nearly 3 million evacuated residents pouring back onto the highways for home, the news was overwhelmingly positive. Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the nation's gasoline suffered only a glancing blow, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs. The reflooding in New Orleans from levee breaks was isolated mostly to areas already destroyed and deserted, and could be pumped out in as little as a week. And contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north as a tropical depression instead of par'dng over the South for days and dumping a predicted 25 inches of torrential rains. Most significantly, deaths were minimal - with only two deaths reported so far - largely because residents with fresh memories of Katrina heeded evacuation orders and the storm followed a path that spared Houston and more populous stretches Something to cheer about AP photo A TRUCK DRIVES TO A HOME in Esther, La., Sunday. Flood waters are as high as nine feet in some parts of the state. of the coast. Along the central Louisiana coastline where Rita's heavy rains and storm-surge flooding pushed water up to nine feet in homes, more than 100 boats gassed up at an Abbeville car dealership Sunday before venturing out on search-andrescue missions to find hundreds of residents believed to have tried to ride out Rita. About 500 people were rescued from high Slaff Writer Ryan Talbot phoiolrlalboi@cc.usu.edu >RlTA See page 3 Utah State projects assist the blind BY ELIZABETH LAWYER USU's BRIAN Sol tackles UNLV quarterback Shane Steichen. The Aggies earned their 100th win in Romney Stadium Saturday. See story on page 15. waters along the Louisiana coast in the immediate aftermath of the storm and emergency calls were still coming in from far-flung areas near the Gulf of Mexico. "The flooding is still extensive," said Michael Bertrand of the Vermilion Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness, adding that water was actually creeping into areas that were spared flooding Saturday. "Well be going back through there to see if there's anybody left." During a helicopter tour, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, whose Cajun roots run deep in the region, got her first look at the hardest-hit areas. In Cameron Parish, just across the state line from Texas and in the path of Rita's harshest winds east of the eye, fishing communities were reduced to splinters, with concrete slabs the only evidence that homes once stood there. Debris was strewn for miles by water or wind. Holly Beach, a popular vacation and fishing spot, was gone. Only the stilts that held houses off the ground remained. A line of shrimp boats steamed through an oil sheen to reach Hackberry, only to find homes and camps had been flattened. In one area, there was a flooded high school football field, its bleachers and goal posts jutting from what had become part of the Gulf of Mexico. "In Cameron, there's really hardly anything left. Everything is just obliterated," said Blanco, who has asked the federal government for S34 billion to aid in storm recovery. Added Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau, head of the Louisiana National Guard: "This is terrible. Whole communities are gone." Some bayou residents arrived with boats in The Computer Science Assistive Technology Laboratory at Utah State University is working on several projects designed to assist the blind. The most developed project is a robotic dog that is about 3 feet high. RoboCart uses sensors placed in an environment, such as a grocery store, to navigate. It gives audio prompts to the user, who uses a keypad similar to a telephone to tell the robot where to go. Chaitanya Gharpure, a computer science master's student, is working on the robot. RoboCart has had national attention and there are working models of the robot in use at Lee's Marketplace. It was featured in local papers as well as USAToday and BBC news. Vladimir Kulyukin, an assistant professor of computer science, is working on another device called the Wayfinder. The device uses three navigational tools to tell the user where to go, Wi-Fi, the same system used for wireless internet access, can be used indoors. The Global Positioning System can be used outdoors and a digital compass orients the device directionally. Each of the navigation tools compensate for the weaknesses of the others, enabling the Wayfinder to give accurate directions. "It's a very helpful device just to orient me in an environment," Kasondra Payne, one of the subjects helping test the device, said. Payne said she has been visually impaired all her life and has limited vision in her left eye. The best way to explain it, she said, is "I can see a street sign, but I can't read it." Payne said she uses other methods of finding her way around and would not need to depend on the Wayfinder unless in a new environment. "Or, if I'm lazy or tired. Being a mother of two and a half kids, that happens a lot," she said, laughing. •WAYFINDER See page 4 |