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Show Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010 Page 6 AggieLif• Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.utahstatesman.com Getting ready for the future of academics By NIKKI LIVES staff writer followed during the tournaments, especially during the final match. "We wanna do a ping pong tournament, school-wide, the week after Thanksgiving," Florek said. They would like to keep the tournament cheap to keep it accessible to more people, he said. The money would go toward things like refreshments and prizes. "We'll have bigger prizes. That's where the sponsors come in," Florek said. He said he wants to make larger tournaments more regular. His hope is for at least one campus-wide tournament a semester. But he doesn't plan to stop there, either. "I was gonna try to call the nationwide ping-pong league." Florek said. He wants to see if he could get the winners of the USU tournaments qualified for larger tournaments. He is also going to try to Upon hearing the phrase "Center for the School of the Future," one may think of whirring, hovering school buses and space-age chalkboards. In reality, the Center for the School of the Future (CSF) is a research center tucked away in a quiet corner of campus. According to the CSF website, the center is "dedicated to improving the quality and effectiveness of education by identifying effective educational practices" and then employing these practices in schools. Richard West, executive director of CSF, says the Center is a variety of tools and procedures to help schools evaluate how effectively they are meeting their charge to provide a quality education." "The Center helps schools to assess and consult," said Matthew Taylor, director of research and evaluation at the Center. The CSF works with anywhere between 1,600 to 1,800 schools, processing and assessing important educational outcome, such as how children learn and how they can learn better. "Our mission was to enter into partnerships with public school interests and we have been working together to improve the quality of education for over 10 years," West said. Financed by ongoing federal funding since 1999, West said that the CSF is "more than just a project. It is a fully franchised research center on campus." The CSF is working on an education project called Project Learn. The project takes on finding the trust lands around the nation and putting them to better use. "It is bigger than even a Utah project," said Kim Campbell, project coordinator. "Our founding fathers gave us land to be put in the trust of children," West said. These lands are also known as trust school lands. They were meant for schools to be built upon, but the problem now is that they have been lost or taken over. "There was a point when no one knew where the lands were," Taylor said. "Then there was a movement to recover the lands." Some lands were found but were not being used well, and Project Learn helps the states manage the land resource better, and also use the resource as efficiently as possible. They aim to use these lands for the purposes they were intended: to build schools and aid in the efficiency of these schools. "Project Learn is a good example of using congressional money to spend a dime and earn a dollar," Taylor said. According to West, the Center for the School of the Future has also launched a series of projects on improving the leadership in I See PING PONG, page 8 I See FUTURE, page 7 " THE PING PONG CLUB is a new club on campus, but a popular one. They already have 80 members, and are trying to get more funding in order to expand their space. CATHERINE URIE photo Just wanna play ping pong By MELODY CAMPBELL staff writer Alex Florek, an undeclared sophomore, wanted to join the ping pong club. The only problem? There wasn't one .. . yet. "I just thought they'd have a ping pong club. And they didn't have one, and told me to start one," Florek said. Logan Skeen, a sophomore in agricultural business, is one of the vice presidents of the club, which he said started about a month ago. Since then, the club has been focused on recruiting members. They estimated that they had about 80 people who signed up. Around 30 show up to play each week in the upper left gym of the HPER building. They meet at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, and are officially called the Table Tennis Club. "The main purpose of the club is to relish ping pong," Florek said. "Everybody's welcome." Some members are more experienced, but there are players of all skill levels there. Members do not even have to know how to play before coming. "We listen to music and kind of like dance ... while playing ping-pong," Skeen said. He said the environment of the Ping Pong club is relaxed and social. Jaron Dunford, sophomore in public relations and the club's contact adviser, said, "It's a great atmosphere to play ping pong, but even better for meeting people." The club plays both by official rules and casually, with casual play taking place during the first half of the club meetings. "When we're playing casual we don't really enforce the rules ... we're just having fun." Skeen said. "Usually just mess around for the first hour, half hour, then we set up a little tournament." Florek said. The rules are USU's A-Team mentors and educates incoming students By KASEY VAN DYKE staff writer The A-Team stands for "truth and valour," according to Kate Gourley, one of the coordinators for USU's student orientation and peer mentoring group, the A-Team. Lisa Hancock, program administrator of New Student Orientation, said the A-Team exists to help students with the transition from high school to college. "We are basically mentors for the new students and parents," she said. Jo Olsen, also an A-Team coordinator and senior studying public relations and communications, echoed Hancock. "We basically help the new students feel comfortable," he said. The A-Team, a separate entity from the USU Ambassadors who also help with new students and retention, consists of more than 30 USU students who study university policies and procedures, conduct Student Orientation, Advising and Registration (SOAR) and work as peer mentors in the Connections classes. Hancock said the A-Team focuses mostly on orientation and retention of new students. She said the students in the organization are well-informed. Olsen said SOAR and Connections are helpful for new students who aren't familiar with a college environment. "I'm from Logan and I just assumed I knew everything about campus," he said. "I was surprised how scared I was the first day, freshman year. You don't expect what happens the first day of class." Olsen said SOAR goes along with the other half of the ATeam goal-retention. We help students stick around," he said. We want students to stay at USU and if they don't have a good start, they won't see the benefit of that." Connections and SOAR give new students an opportunity to experience college life before classes start, from registering for classes to finding a good place to eat. I See A-TEAM, page 8 For those who listen and those who speak By JESSICA BLACK staff writer For those who have an urge to read their writing out loud, Helicon West provides the way. Every other Thursday, writers from both USU and the community are welcome to either listen to others works, or read works of their own. Helicon West will feature readers from the new anthology, "New Poets of the American West," including Utah Poet Laureate Katharine Coles, Rob Carney, Elaine Christensen, Chris Cokinos, Star Coulbrooke, and Michael Sowder. An microphone for open discussion will follow immediately after the authors read their chosen works. According to Star Coulbrooke, director of the USU Writing Center and coordinator for Helicon West, the event began in 2005 with the intent to unite the writing community in the valley to share their work. Coulbrooke also said they encouraged any form of writing to be read at the events, not just poetry. "We didn't want to compete with Poetry and a Beverage," Coulbrooke said. "Poetry and a Beverage is a place where you can do other things while you listen, we wanted a place with a captivated audience. A place where people could feel like their writing mattered." According to the group's mission statement, the event's purpose is to give a place and time for members of the writing community to "give their work a public voice, with no restrictions on levels of skill and no censorship of ideas or craft." Susan Nyikos, USU English professor and active participant in Helicon West, said her favorite thing is when she spots her own students in the crowd and gets to talk to them about their individual experience. One of her students, pre-physical therapy sophomore Kelsey Sax, said, "A point I learned after (Helicon West) was how you can write about anything — literally, anything." Coulbrooke said reading any written work I See READING, page 7 HELICON WEST AIMS to give a place for the community to read their work to a welcoming audience. Anyone can come and sign up for a time 20 minutes before hand and read a five minute long section of their work. ARMEN HOSVEPYAN photo |