Study abroad on the rise despite tuition increase

The end of the spring semester at WSU marks the end of school and the beginning of summer. But for some students, opting to go to work to earn money for the next semester of increased tuition is not the first priority. With over 1,200 study abroad programs offered by the University, many students are looking to travel outside the US for their education.

Education Abroad Director Candace Chenoweth has seen a steady increase in numbers of students studying abroad since tuition increases.

“I think the students recognize that in this day in age it’s good to get a wider perspective of the world,” Chenoweth said.

In last decade, numbers of students studying abroad have gone up 157.4 percent at WSU, peaking in 2006 at 619 students studying outside the US.

Open Door 2009, a study abroad fact sheet from the Institution of International Education Network website showed figures resembling the climb at WSU. According to the latest report, Americans studying abroad rose 8.5 percent during the 2007-2008 academic year.

But how are those numbers increasing while tuition continues to climb? Chenowith said students are becoming interested in seeing themselves as global citizens more than ever, now, and the study abroad office is working harder than ever to help those students achieve that goal.

Chenowith listed off ways students can become globally oriented: Attending lectures covering international topics, interacting with international students and taking foreign language courses.
“So there’s a lot of ways students can do that—taking a foreign language, getting a global studies minor –whatever it is, but there really isn’t any replacement for being there,” she added.

She also attributed the steady increase in study abroad numbers to the narrowing gap between study abroad program costs and WSU tuition costs brought on by the 14 percent tuition increase set for the university in 2009.

An average of 575 students traveling outside of the US each year since the tuition increase, with numbers peaking in the 2006-2007 academic year.

She said many students determined to attend WSU are now seeing the $2,000 or $3,000 more that it may cost to study abroad over the rising tuition as being more feasible.

Chenowith said perspectives vary between potential study abroad students who each may have different socio-economic standing.

“We have students applying for every scholarship they can find, who are working extra jobs, who lived at home so they could save more money if they lived in Pullman, to take that money and use it for study abroad,” she said.

“We have other students for whom cost is not really an issue,” Chenowith said. “What we do find is that interest is stronger than ever,” she said.
Jimmy Drago, a freshman international business major at WSU, is a student looking to study in Spain during the 2011 summer.

Drago said he had not thought about cost but was determined to go.

“My parents are big supporters of it, so I think they really want me to do it,” Drago said. “They’ll probably support me financially,” he added.

Rylie Sedustine, a senior hospitality business management major, went on a five-week summer study abroad trip to Florence, Italy between her junior and senior years.

Sedustine said her interest in building educational experience abroad outweighed any hesitance from thinking about financing it.

“I funded my trip through study abroad scholarships and also using my rollover grants and scholarships that WSU gave me for previous semesters,” she said. “I also did a few fundraising events.”

“I didn’t mind spending a lot of money on study abroad because I knew it was an investment in myself and my future,” Sedustine added.

Chenowith said budgeting is an issue many students studying abroad face, but can be lessened by learning from students in the study abroad ambassador program who speak to students about their experiences on trips.

“You only have a certain amount of money in your bank account,” Chenowith said hypothetically. “How are you gonna make it? How are you gonna budget? I think that nowadays there is so much information available,” she said.

“There are two expensive things when you’re studying abroad: Drinking and traveling,” Chenowith said. “So if students cut down on the number of alcoholic beverages they consume, they’ll save money. And if they understand that they can travel locally rather than having to jet off to another place they’ll also be saving,” she added.

Chenowith expects numbers of students to continue increasing, as the WSU study abroad office is working to promote education outside the US through social media networks, like Facebook.com, and speaking to students at Alive! freshman orientation and Future Cougar days.

“Students, of course, are excited to have an adventure,” Chenowith said. “They tell us they want to meet people from around the world. They want to have fun, which are also valid,” she added.

“I think when they come back, they’ll tell you that the benefits were much deeper and more truly life altering, life changing than they expected it to be,” Chenowith said.


###

Torsten Kjellstrand

Torsten spoke to students and faculty about visual storytelling, highlighting the importance of possessing both technical skill with media technology and also an eye for building compositions. I found his presentation to be both informative and hands-on, showing that the skills and experience he has in photojournalism would be an important component to the experience future journalism students at WSU will have.

Questions for Eric Sorensen

1) How do you find out about stories like this?

2) How did you get into writing?

3) What got you interested in science writing?

4) Are there differences between science writing and non-science writing that are less-noticable from the outside?

5) Advice for graduating seniors looking for jobs?

Adapting to changing social media

Not much is needed to win a Nook eBook Reader from the Compton Union Building at WSU. The main requirements are simple enough: Log onto Facebook, add the CUB as one of your fanpages and leave a comment on it. Of course, only one of these digital book readers is to be awarded and the chances aren’t necessarily promising. But there still remains a draw for visitors of the page powerful enough to keep wall posts rolling in.

With new social media, advertisers are looking to develop new strategies of bringing attention to their product.

While the CUB may be doing just that, having a thriving base of commenting fans, many posts on the page’s wall feature content alluding to exclusive interest in winning prizes. From Monday, Apr. 19 to the evening of Wednesday, Apr. 21, 18 percent of the wallposts either mentioned an iPad or eNook, or were requesting to be chosen as the winner of the next competition.

These new strategies are not new–enticement to buy products, with the prospect of give-aways, has been common even to Internet Websites. Olive Garden’s Win a Culinary Tour of Italy, Travel Channel’s Trip a Month Sweepstakes, and T-Mobile’s El Llamado del Futbol Sweepstakes are all devout employers of this strategy. But now, this advertising method is being brought right into the social circles of the millions of Facebook members.

The future of Facebook

Facebook announced on Wednesday at the company’s annual F8 developer’s conference in San Francisco that changes to popular social networking site will incorporate a series of “social graphing” tools.

These tools are aimed at widening the sphere and reach of an individual’s content preferences. An example provided in the conference is creating more “Like” button tools on other site, like iMDB.com, which would, in the case of a user “liking” a piece of content such as a particular movie, automatically update the user’s Facebook favorite movies list. Individuals would be able to move their preferences, after accepting agreements to do so, between their preferred Websites they visit.

Phil McGuire, a network engineer for Seattle-based Spectrum Networks, said the move by Facebook is a step forward.

“It's very exciting to see the web being used in its intended form,” McGuire said. “Tim Berners Lee, often considered the Father of the Internet, has envisioned a linked open data web from day one. I think this would be a great step toward seeing that,” he said.

H&R Block strategy

Jason Falls, whose blog post on SocialMediaExplorer.com about H&R Block in 2008 refer to a similar theme, seemed to inadvertently forecast the current trend in social media advertising.

In Fall’s blog post, he noted the effective use of the tax company’s Twitter account to befriend him and engage in “human” dialogue. Falls continued, saying that:

“As it turns out, H&R Block not only gets the outreach portion of it, but has figured out a way to be 100-percent, totally marketing/advertising to people using social media tools and somehow pull it off. No, I wasn’t sure if it was possible, but I’ll be damned if I don’t like this campaign.”

Falls attributed the company’s ability to “pull it off” with using “honest/transparent, human, fun and engaging” strategy.

Criticism of CUB strategy

Some students believe the strategy used by the CUB’s fanpage admins is bringing in more visitors, but less valuable content.

“A lot of the comments mean nothing,” said Jared Johnson, a student employee of the CUB. “I don’t know if they’re getting the result they’re looking for,” Johnson said. “There is no guarantee that they [students] are looking at your content,” he added.

However, just like the H&R Block example, the admins of the Compton Union Building are also using a similar means of connecting with students outside of using the give-away method.

CUB strategy and the H&R Block method

Admins of the page frequently reply to the posts, even a few exclusively focused on winning the give-aways.

Replies are polite and “human,” ranging from answering questions about the Murrow Symposium that was hosted in the facility, to a simple “We had a good time too ;)” in reply to a comment that read “I had a good time chilling in you.”

Despite criticism, the CUB is building a base from which to gather more responses from students, both valuable and less so. In bigger terms, though, they are adapting to a time of constantly changing social networking.

Outline

1. Lede

2. Nutgraf - CUB advertising strategy in social networks

3. Changing landscapes of social networking - Facebook F8 conference

4. H&R Block success story

5. Criticism of CUB strategy

6. CUB fits H&R Block model?

7. End- CUB is trying to adapt to chaning social networking

Sources

Phil McGuire (found online)
Network engineer - Spectrum Networks
(425)443-9127

Jason Falls (found online)
Blogger - SocialMediaExplorer.com
jason@socialmediaexplorer.com

Jared Johnson
CUB student employee
(509)520-5864

math practice

1. $78,850

2. 87%

3. 20%

4a. 25%

4b. 33%

5.  10.7%

6. 

7. $280,000

8a. 20%

8b. 1%

9. 70 of 10,000 in Pullman v. and 20 in 10,000 in Spokane

10a. $790,600

10b. $207,000

11. margin of error

Response to the letter

Wickramatung's last letter offers words I think many preceding him in death in similar circumstances would have written had they thought of it. He showed that journalism, when done as he did, is a duty, and not necessarily just a job. I'm stunned at thinking about how ideals and ethics, if held to in earnest, will go down with you to the grave. I've already learned that if I was in it for the money, I wouldn't do it, but this also puts into perspective how far someone will go to live for what they say they believe in, and that challenges me to focus on being more intentional with my career goals.

Sustainability measures increase despite budget

Where a B- once crowned WSU’s sustainability report card only a year ago, a C has now replaced it. Dwight Hagihara, the manager of environmental services at WSU, said the results come partly from a report not being filed on student involvement by a student coordinator and also legal constraints dealing with shareholders.

Though flawed from having one section absent and another incomplete without an adequate shareholder base, the report still has some importance, Hagihara said. Found on the non-profit and nationally utilized college GreenReportCard.org website, WSU’s grade is explained based on survey results submitted primarily by Hagihara and concerning the University’s current sustainability measures during a year marked by concerns with budget issues.

Despite budget cuts in other WSU facets, however, the school’s Environmental Health and Safety department is looking ahead into 2010 to decreased energy costs and increased sustainability efforts.

As director of the EH&S, Hagihara knows the ins and outs of sustainability on campus.

In a conference room in the EH&S Department building on the edge of campus, Hagihara discussed with John Reed, the manager of environmental services, and Gene Patterson, the manager of public health/air and water quality, how even with cuts in the department’s budget, sustainable measures are still in place to save energy, water and money.

Hagihara said alternative building materials, energy and water saving measures and the implementation of recycled paper and paper reduction policies are contributing to a more sustainable campus culture, despite the possible misgivings of the online report card.

“A lot of these projects are preventing and eliminating waste,” he said. “We don’t like to waste energy, we don’t like to waster water. There is a tremendous push from the legislature and also from President Floyd to reduce paper use,” Hagihara added.

Reed said up-front costs for green alternatives are relatively small compared to the savings in money and energy generated through the current sustainable measures in place.

“Like energy conservation projects—they have a certain payback period, then after that, you’re essentially making money; saving money,” Reed said.

Water costs at WSU were cut by over 1,000,000 gallons in 2009 after equipment upgrades to two chiller plants and operational changes were made, according to the EHS annual report released at the end of last month.

Patterson noted that water usage was at its “second lowest since ’61,” a figure also ranking second lowest in nearly 50 states, according to a Feb. 2 WSU Today online article.

Money isn’t necessarily saved by the amount of water that is, though. In talking about saved water, Patterson noted that “cost wise, it’s cheap.”

“If you have to invest a whole lot of money to save this much water, it could be hard to justify,” Reed said. “Now what we did with this chiller plant, we’re saving all kind of energy money, and it’s just efficient in a lot of ways. So it’s cost effective, definitely,” he said.

Other sustainable measures on campus include the closure of Troy Hall, of which Reed said is going will likely remain “moth-balled” to save on energy until a solution for it’s use can be determined.

Hagihara said sustainability has three components the University focuses on.

“The one everybody thinks of is environmental,” Hagihara said. “There’s also economic and social. True sustainability should address those three issues,” he said. “It should be sustainable for the environment, for financially – economics, and for the social issues, so that no one group gets discriminated against. That’s the goal. There should be a balance,” he added.

Hagihara cited the WSU Dining Services purchasing of organic tortillas from a small Spokane company using wheat developed by WSU researchers as fitting the three-part sustainable model.

“The financial has got to be financially sustainable,” he said. “You don’t want to waste money. And nor do you want to have to benefit one group completely over another,” Hagihara added.

The Green Report Card did point out some shortcomings in the sustainability efforts.

“We’re bound by law on how our foundation and endowments are invested, Hagihara said. “That’s why we’re getting an F there,” he said of the shareholders section of the report. Hagihara said the University does not have the same freedoms universities have when it comes to shareholders and investments and legal issues need to be addressed in order to see change.

Even with the current sustainable measures on campus, the report card poses some problems to the University.

"It takes time and time is money," Hagihara said about filling out the reports and forms necessary to compile survey information for the report card.

Reed said another group asked for $700 as a donation for EH&S to prepare and submit reports, in a similar fashion to the Green Report Card.

“That’s how you get an A rating,” Patterson joked.

Reed said for other sustainability surveys, there isn’t an actual cost. “You don’t write out a check, but it’s time,” Reed said.

“If students are going out and reading the darned things, they’re going to make a decision about which university they’re going to go to--there is a marketing advantage,” Hagihara said.

“So like the Princeton Review has one, and we fill that one out for that reason,” Hagihara said. “But otherwise, as a manager of time and money, you have to ask yourself ‘what’s the cost benefit here?’ We’re responsible for state funds. You don’t want us to waste money, either. We’ll spend time with students,” Hagihara concluded.

# # #

Outline

1. Lede

2. Nutgraf - current budget v. sustainability

3. Sustainability measures

4. What is sustainability?

5. Back to the report card

Sources

John Reed
Manager of Environmental Services
johnreed@wsu.edu

Dwight Hagihara
Director of Environmental Health & Safety
hagihara@wsu.edu

Gene Patterson
Manager of Public Health/Air & Water Quality
gpatters@wsu.edu

Story pitch

The story I'd like to work on focuses on WSU's sustainability efforts during the current economic climate. This year WSU's sustainability grade on the sustainability college report card dropped.  What I'll talking about is how WSU is working through keeping sustainability efforts up despite working with their current budget... this includes meeting silver LEED certifications for building and renovation projects, dining hall food purchase standards, etc.  The question will be whether the university is able to continue choosing green and more costly options over cheap and more non-recyclable ones.

WSU scored a B- on the 2009 sustainability college report card and this year a C. What I will be looking at is what sustainability means for WSU; why the university dropped a letter grade on this report card, what the savings incurred based on sustainability measures are, focusing on state-mandated silver LEED building requirements, what other schools are doing and why these measures are so important. WSU has many examples of sustainable projects and policies, ranging from an orchard that produces an estimated $10,000 worth of crops for use in the dining centers, to a sustainability award winning in-plant publishing group. Despite this, WSUs report card shows a possible decline in sustainability progress. I’d like to dig into this one and find out why. To do so, I’ll need to talk to Dwight Hagihara, the Committee Interim Administrator, the ASWSU senate committee on environmental issues, and the CUB director.


Some possible sources to look at:

Survey results for the sustainability report card
WSU Environmental Management System Report
American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment
Silver-LEED minimum building requriements

Testing security

I would allow the reporter to test security if there was a reasonable suspicion that airport security was not adhering to TSA security standards, and, of course, there was no law saying one could not do that.  I would also check into possibly having a marshall accompany the reporter, if I knew that that wouldn't blow their cover.  People getting through security with box-cutters is newsworthy and it shows careless behaviors by security workers that puts others at risk.  I would 

Local festival director gears up for next event

PULLMAN - At the front desk in the Pullman Chamber of Commerce building, Mary MacDonald stands beside a couple who is considering moving to the city and explains to them what they can look forward to as residents. Talking to potential residents is not always one of her duties, however. MacDonald works as the director of the National Lentil Festival. With less than five months left until the event, MacDonald said planning for the 22nd Annual National Lentil Festival is already months underway.

“This is one of those festivals that lasts two days, but for me lasts more like ten months,” MacDonald said.

The Palouse native MacDonald has planned two previous festivals, both of which she said enter planning phases the October following the previous festival.

MacDonald’s planning efforts are not done alone. MacDonald heads a committee of 15 to 20 committee members each with specific responsibilities, including a cook-off chair, microbrewery chair and a Little Lentil King and Queen coordinator.

Previous to her appointment to the position, she said her serving on the US Dry Pea and Lentil Council in Moscow, paired with her experience as a fifth generation farmer and holder of leadership positions, helped prepare her for her current role.

Planning for MacDonald includes what she calls her near “three-inch-thick to-do list” and what she describes as “a lot of 18 hour days.”

For each of the two festivals she has organized, she said the most challenging aspects of the job come from recruiting enough volunteers, which she said often number an estimated 300 people.

MacDonald said the festival’s history shows how much it has changed.

The first festival was in 1989 and was originally held every two months until the festival committee decided a change was needed due to low turnouts, MacDonald said.

“It was great but really small and really mediocre,” MacDonald said. “Then we decided to put all our energy into one festival every year,” she said of the festival committee.

MacDonald said the idea of showcasing the lentil came from careful consideration of local agriculture and ultimately deciding on a crop not typically highlighted by a community.

“Nobody celebrates lentils because they don’t know what they are,” she said.

MacDonald said the uniqueness of creating a festival around lentils helped build more interest in it due to the curiosity it raises.

With an estimated 98 percent of lentils grown in the United States being produced in Whitman County, Pullman is living up to its reputation as the lentil capital of the country.

Pullman isn’t the only city showcasing crops as the iconic symbols of their community festivals, though.

Every year during the last full weekend in July, people flock to Gilroy, California for the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. The City of Opelousas, Louisiana hosts the Yambilee Festival in honor of the local sweet potato crops. And in Fairborn, Ohio, crowds gather for corn shucking at the Sweet Corn Festival.

Events like these are part of an even larger industry, as the International Festivals & Events Association, or IFEA, notes on their website.

The IFEA website states that on a global scale, four to five million regular and re-occurring events and festivals are held each year, a number the site also claims contributes to a trillion dollar economic impact in US currency on the world market.

MacDonald, who attended IFEA’s 53rd annual international festival convention last year in Boise, Idaho, said festival organizers are constantly looking to find new ways of making their events better through improved sponsorship strategies, event ideas and also how to make festivals more environmentally sound.

As with other festival directors, developing a more “green” festival is something MacDonald said the Nation Lentil Festival Committee is working toward.

An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people attend the National Lentil Festival each year, numbers MacDonald said were calculated based on average pounds of garbage generated per one attendee in the past.

With a push to become more recycle-oriented, the committee no longer uses the method of calculating attendees because of lower garbage generation, but instead looks to calculations made based on food consumption.

MacDonald said the overall benefits to the community are a high priority.

With a budget of about $50,000 granted by the City of Pullman on top of additional money brought in through sponsoring, the festival committee works to keep a sustainable event with low costs to participants paying for participation fees in the sports activities offered, MacDonald said.

MacDonald said most years the event breaks even in revenue, but sometimes is under and rarely slightly over the initial costs at the end of the event.

Despite these outcomes, community members remain confident in the overall benefits of the festival.

Monique Slipher, an employee at Bruised Books in Pullman, said she has worked during the festival in her 15 years of employment at different Main Street and nearby businesses and has seen a positive effect on the local economy.

“It draws a lot of people to town,” she said. “It’s probably the biggest thing in Pullman for the year,” she added.

Gunnar Nordquist, a WSU student who has attended the festival in previous years, said the festival provides an opportunity for the community to come together.

“It defines Pullman,” he added.

For now, MacDonald is continuing her campaign to build her sponsorship base and her festival organizing.

“For Pullman it’s a sense of pride,” she said. “Pullman is the home of WSU and the National Lentil Festival,” she added.

# # #

Sources

Mary MacDonald
National Lentil Festival Director
director@lentilfest.com

Gunnar Nordquist
WSU Student
gunnar_nordquist@yahoo.com

Monique Slipher
Employee, Bruised Books
mslipher@hotmail.com

Outline for lentil fest story

1. Lede

2. Mary MacDonald

3. History of Lentil Festival

4. The Festival "industry"

5. Current NLF status

6. Community reaction

7. Final MacDonald quote

On one hand, what would this photo really do to illustrate the situation at hand?  Is it worth running the risk of losing your job/offending millions of Americans (potentially)/or actually causing some sort of profound positive change?  On does the photo offer a crucial news value?  I don't believe that there is a significant news value to this photo.  I believe that it has a purpose, but not necessarily best served in a daily newspaper.  Americans know that American soldiers are dying.  Showing a graphic illustration should be reserved to highlight an unknown social injustice, in my opinion.  Rather, this photo may be better used in a political magazine of some sort, where audiences must go out of their way to pick one up.  Newspapers are more readily accessible.  I can't explain why this makes a difference, but I think it does.

Martha Mendoza

I was able to listen to Martha Mendoza speak in the Evergreen conference room a week or so ago. What really intrigued me about what she said was her experiences in doing investigative-type journalism. Tracking down people for stories and reaching out to great extents for the sake of news gathering is pretty intense to hear about first-hand. I benifited from hearing what her processes were for working on projects like the Korean War story. I thought it also interesting how she believes FOIA requests should acknowledged in the story. I suppose I had never thought of that before.

Libel practice

1. “Up until the day he died, he was a brilliant writer. But the drugs made him a thief, a pimp and a liar,” said friend Karen Smith, who was with Johnson at the time of his death.

Not Libel depending on the state.  You can't libel a dead person in most states. The source is trusted, also.  Smith was at Johnson's side upon his death.

2. “Megan Fox is a man!” Headline on Weekly World News Web site

It's satirical (hyperbole), Fox is a public figure, and WWNews is a parody paper.

3. “In my opinion, Kevin is a murdering rapist,” the prosecutor told the jury.

Not Libel.  This a quote from part of the trial. 

4. "In my opinion, he's a murdering rapist," the man said at the rally.

Libel.

Outline

Palouse Producers site

Explanation of the Brownfield site

IPG awarded to Palouse

What’s in the site exactly?

How did the site get contaminated?

How much will this clean-up cost?

Who will pay for it?

Ideas for development?

Who owns it now?