VOLUME XXXI, NO. 11 THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF UTD AUGUST 22, 2011

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Freshmen move into Res Halls, apartments

PAGE 11

Student enrollment continues to climbNADA ALASMIMercury Staff

UTD is poised to break yet another student enrollment record.

There will be about 18,400 stu-dents enrolled at UTD in fall 2011, according to projections by the Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis, or OSPA.

The enrollment growth of about 1,000 more students marks a 7 percent increase from fall 2010.

“Even though there are very few days left until classes begin, historically many new students enroll in the last few days,” said Lawrence Redlinger, OSPA executive director, in an email to The Mercury. “If historical trends repeat themselves, enrollment could reach 18,750 (students this fall).”

In the past, enrollment at UTD has followed a pattern of about three years of rapid growth (at 5 percent or more), followed by seven years of slow growth (less than 5 percent per year), accord-

ing to information from the OSPA.UTD should, on average, grow at a

rate of 5 percent per year for the next eight or nine years, Redlinger said. For the first time in UTD’s history, a large growth in enrollment is expected to continue not for only three years, but for an entire decade.

He also added that by 2020, enroll-ment should be at least 25,000 stu-dents.

see ENROLLMENT page 7

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

Indian students arrive at the DFW International Airport on Aug. 14. Many students coming from overseas must wait until the end of August to move into their apartments. Meanwhile, a record total of 700 international students have requested short-term accomodations.

Parking changes at SOMNADA ALASMIMercury Staff

Lot J, located near the Activity Center, lost more than 25 parking spaces when it was repainted on August 10, according to informa-tion from Paul Smith, Parking and Transportation supervisor.

The gold spaces, which Smith said were used by students in the School of Management, or SOM, were “moved” to the SOM’s lots and replaced by 14 purple, 10 or-ange, three green and nine handi-cap parking spaces, Smith said.

These purple and orange spaces were added to replace Lot F, which will be demolished along with UTD’s old bookstore, to make way for the Arts and Technology build-ing.

Repainting will also take place in the parking lots near the SOM — lots Q, M-North, M-East and the new M-West, which is yet to open. Currently these lots are per-mit-type segregated: Lot Q and M-North, near the SOM side doors, are for purple and orange permits and lot M-East near the front en-trance is for orange and gold per-

see PARKING page 7

BEN HAWKINS/STAFF

Forty special needs children attended the Lose the Training Wheels camp at UTD, hosted by the Down Syndrome Guild of Dallas, which took place Aug. 8-12.

Losing the training wheels

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

Overcrowded housingTemp housing requests at all-time highANWESHA BHATTACHARJEEMercury Staff

Two major international student organizations are struggling to handle a 33 percent increase in temporary housing requests from new students this fall, resulting in a dearth of short-term accommodation for the new students.

Joyee Gao, president of the Friend-ship Association of Chinese Students and Scholars, or FACSS, said their website had received more than 400 requests from incoming Chinese stu-dents for airport pick-ups and tempo-rary housing.

Meanwhile, the Indian Students Association, or ISA, has received close to 300 similar requests for fall 2011, said computer science graduate stu-dent and ISA volunteer Lakshmikan-than Vijayaraghavam.

Since some schools had depart-ment orientations starting Aug. 16, many students arrived early in order to attend. However, most of the on- and off- campus move-in dates are in late August or September, so these students need temporary accommo-

dation for 15 to 20 days until they can move in to their own apartments.

Jiayi Liu, Accounting & Informa-tion Management graduate student and a volunteer with FACSS, said their organization has two main ways to accommodate the new students temporarily.

“The first resource is our students from previous years who have already settled down and have an apartment,” Liu said. “The other resource (are the

local churches), which have helped us a lot — they pick up students from the airport and provide temporary ac-commodation to the new students.”

The high demand for temporary housing keeps in line with UTD’s in-creasing international student enroll-ment. More than 1,300 international students were expected to attend the six international student orientations in August, which is a 40 percent in-crease over last year’s number of 959

students. In an effort to cope with the situ-

ation, Doug Eckel, associate dean in the School of Management, asked for help with temporarily housing about 100 Chinese, Taiwanese and Indian students in an email to all faculty, staff and students on Aug. 11. Ten students and faculty mem-bers responded to the email within

see HOUSING page 13

New ATEC complex comingSHANE DAMICOEditor-in-Chief

This fall Arts & Technology stu-dents will file into one of the five classrooms available to them from sunrise until after sunset; but, as soon as fall 2013 ATEC students will have one of the largest buildings on campus to call their home.

Construction has begun on a $60.5 million, 150,000-square-foot complex intended to primarily house ATEC and Visual Arts students in response to the programs’ significant growth.

The new ATEC facility will cover roughly twice the real estate of the Student Services Building and will be built between the McDermott Library and School of Management building, where the on-campus bookstore was formerly located.

Richard Dempsey, associate vice president for Business Affairs, said the ATEC program is an exciting development that the university is eager to highlight.

“The whole program has grown

very rapidly,” Dempsey said. “But the (current ATEC) building just doesn’t work at all. Every time I (visit) there are people sitting around the halls.”

Thomas Linehan, head of the ATEC program, said classes are cur-rently scheduled from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. to compensate for the lack of classroom space, and research labs are even harder to come by.

“One of the biggest problems we have is that because we consume so much of our equipment and software with classroom-based instruction it’s hard for the students to get in and work independently,” Linehan said. “We have a small lab that we call our ‘kitchen lab’ now where students can come in any time and work, but we just don’t have the resources that we need because we’re growing every single year at a pace that I’m going to need a couple more classrooms be-fore the new building is even ready in order to survive.”

Once the ATEC complex is complete, students will have ac-cess to multiple small research labs.

Each lab will feature a modular ta-ble and chair setup with electrical outlets installed into the floor to assist with custom layouts within the room, Linehan said. Many of the labs will include state of the art hardware and software prein-stalled, he said.

In addition to the smaller free-to-access labs, larger, exclusive research space will also be built to support

see ATEC page 7

• $60.5 million total project cost

• 150,000 square feet

• 1,200 seat lecture hall

• Broke ground August 2011

• Estimated completion date of fall 2013

BY THE NUMBERS

the MercuryFrom war to the chessboard

PAGE 13

News WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM THE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 20112UTD Police scanner

July 25• A student reported his vehi-cle had been burglarized.

July 26• UTD Police received a report of unwanted physical contact.

• A student reported their vehicle had been burglarized.

July 27• A contractor reported 12 rolls of fencing were stolen

from a construction area.• UTD Police received a report of theft of a bicycle from Phase V.

July 29• A student was cited for Consumption of Alcohol by a Minor.

July 31• Two non-affiliated persons were arrested for Possession of Marijuana Under 2 oz and

Possession of a Controlled Substance pursuant to a traf-fic stop.

August 1• A laptop was reported sto-len.

• A bicycle was reported sto-len.

August 10• UTD Police officers were dispatched to the Waterview Apartments Building 4 in

reference to criminal mis-chief.

August 13• A non-affiliated person was cited for criminal trespass-ing.

August 14• A non-affiliated person was arrested for Driving While Intoxicated and Possession of Marijuna Under 2 oz pur-suant to a traffic stop.

The following is a break-down of key topics raised at the Aug. 16 Student Gov-ernment, or SG, meeting. Full minutes of meetings can be found at www.utdal-las.edu/student/sg/.

Marilyn Kaplan, SG’s faculty advisor, said a few changes have been made to the university’s academic dishonesty policy. Faculty will determine a student’s punishment and then sub-mit their case to Judicial Affairs. Following judg-ment, a board composed of faculty and students will review student appeals.

Brittany Sharkey-An-drews, SG president and Art & Performance senior, said the Executive Com-mittee had quite a bit of money left over in its bud-get, about $3,000. As a re-sult, SG will use the extra funds to host a Welcome Week after party from 9-11 p.m. on Sept. 1. The event will include live music, a dunking booth, “pie-a-sen-ator” and more.

Other purchases made with the money were for an additional laptop — used

for voting booths, student sound offs and commit-tee use — plaques for past and future homecoming kings and queens, Comet Textswap themed book-marks and Executive Com-mittee name tags.

Kaitlyn West, Residential Student Affairs Committee chair and sophomore, said Thea Junt, UTD sustain-ability manager, informed her that more cardboard was recycled during this year’s freshman move-in than any other day in UTD’s history.

Kayla Klein, Academic Affairs Committee chair and undecided sopho-more, said the next Comet Textswap will be from 12-2 p.m. on Aug. 29 and 30 in the Phoenix room and the SOM Town Hall will be from 4-6 p.m. on Sept. 12 in the Executive Dining Hall.

Mechanical engineering freshman Saamer Mansoor was appointed to senate.

The next senate meeting will take place at 5:15 p.m. on Sept. 6 in one of the Galaxy Rooms.

News briefsConference Centerrenamed

As of mid-August the Con-ference Center has been offi-cially renamed the Alexander Clark Center. The change is in response to a decision

made by the UT System Board of Regents earlier this spring.

The building is named in honor of Alexander Clark, former vice president of aca-demic affairs, who passed away summer 2009, said Vice

President of Business Affairs Richard Dempsey.

According to a meeting between university officials, the Clark Center will be re-furnished and food and drink will be prohibited. Over the next year, certain events will

gradually be removed from the building in an attempt to promote more formal inter-actions, such as guest speak-ers and lecture series.

Dempsey said a dedication will be held later this fall.

— Shane Damico

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OpinionWWW.UTDMERCURY.COM n THE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 4Common centsMoney tips from a finance profJARED PICKENSFinance Professor

Welcome freshmen and returning students! I’m pleased to announce the addition of “Common Cents,” a col-umn devoted to personal finance, for the readers of The Mercury. Whether you’re a freshman or a se-nior, it’s never too early or too late to start think-ing about your personal finances.

I know what you may be thinking — “Personal finance is not something I care about right now. I’ll worry about it when I’m out of college with a job and liv-ing on my own.” Before you stop reading, consider these statistics:

• 62 percent of graduates from public universities will graduate with an average of $20,200 in student loan debt, which will take more than 10 years to pay off.

• 45 percent of college students have four or more credit cards. The average student’s credit card debt is more than $3,000.

• Students and graduates between ages 18 and 24 spend nearly 30 per-cent of their monthly income just on debt repayment.

• The number of 18- to 24-year-olds declaring bankruptcy has in-creased by 96 percent in the past 10 years.

• 50.8 percent of college-age adults agree with this statement: “I have ex-perienced repeated, unsuccessful at-tempts to control, cut back or stop excessive money use.”

Do you still think this column doesn’t apply to you? Consider this: The average 21-year-old in the Unit-ed States — that’s you — will spend more than $2.2 million in his or her lifetime. Of that statistic, nearly 30 percent will go to debt repayment, that’s roughly $660,000. Start prac-ticing good financial habits now and think of what you could buy with that extra $660,000!

Over the course of this semester I’ll cover personal finance issues that are unique to college students. We’ll discuss tuition and financial aid, the use of student loans, credit cards, your credit score, ways to manage your spending habits and many other topics.

It hasn’t been that long since I was in college and I know first-hand how important it is to begin making good financial decisions now. As the first member of my family to graduate from college, I put myself through school working 40 hours a week and attending classes full time. While I

was a student, there were times that I thought I had my finances all fig-ured out and there were times that I struggled.

I was one of those 62 percent of students who graduated with student loan debt, and after we graduated, my wife and I were among those who

spent nearly 30 percent of our monthly income on debt repayment. My experiences with my own finances are what encouraged me to study financial planning and what gave me the passion to pass the financial lit-eracy lessons that I have

learned on to you.Since it wasn’t that long ago that

I was right where you are, I want to conclude this column with a few per-sonal spending tips from my own col-lege experiences to help you get the semester started on the right foot:

• Instead of buying your textbooks, consider renting or using e-books.

• You don’t need a top-of-the-line computer or laptop to succeed in college. The cheaper models will do everything you need them to do and there’s always the computer lab.

• Bring drinks and snacks with you to campus. You would be amazed how much you can save by not using vending machines. Similarly, set your alarm 10 minutes earlier in the morn-ing and make your own coffee!

• Use your financial aid check for educational purposes only. You are more likely to get into larger amounts of debt if you get into the habit of us-ing that money for personal expenses.

• Most importantly, don’t stress over money. Start making wise deci-sions now and enjoy your time in col-lege!

About the AuthorJared Pickens is a senior lecturer

in finance and the associate director of finance for the School of Manage-ment at UTD. He has bachelors and masters degrees in personal financial planning and is a certified financial planner™ practitioner and an accred-ited financial counselor. He practiced financial planning for four years and has been teaching classes in personal and corporate finance since August 2009. Throughout his career, Pickens has given more than 250 presenta-tions and speeches discussing per-sonal finance topics across the United States. He is also an active member of the Financial Planning Association of Dallas/Fort Worth. Pickens has been married to his wife, Kimberly, for five years, and they are expecting their first son, Cohen, in September.

Beginning of the endAdvice from a senior in his final collegiate yearPAUL DANGMercury Staff

I guess this is it.Almost two decades of academia

culminates as I am a couple semes-ters and a few more credits away from graduating from this fine in-stitute of learnedness.

I have to admit that despite my initial reser-vations about this uni-versity, this school has grown on me.

Like an episode of “Extreme Makeover,” I’ve witnessed the vis-age of this campus transform from beldam to belle as it underwent the surgical precision of construction crews. And unlike that TV show, which stands as an exemplar for the moral bankruptcy of our society, this university’s dis-position has blossomed in sync with its external radiance.

I almost feel bad that the first article I ever wrote for this paper was written in attempt to tear the school a new one, but really I only wrote it to inspire progress in the areas that I felt the university was lacking. Recently however, to my discredit, progress has been the only thing on the agenda of this campus as a record number of students have enrolled here, bringing with them a newfound verve that I had hoped this school would someday boast on its campus. I’m ingesting newsprint as we speak.

As I play that bad-gering Vitamin C song prematurely in my head, I can’t help but feel old and de-crepit at the ripe age of 22 when I see the incoming freshmen adorned with their cute little “silly ban-dz” and the convic-tion that they’ll remain BFFs with their friends from high school.

The soon-to-be four years I’ve spent in higher education have taught me many valuable lessons — almost none of those were learned in class since I spent the majority of my time in class texting. I did, how-ever, gain from attendance lessons that were more important than any lecture I could have taken notes for. Here are some of things I’ve learned over the years.

Time management and the im-portance of priorities: How does one manage to shuffle between the deluge of classes, projects and ex-ams while still conserving time for

friends and the recurrent episodes of substance abuse? What happens when procrastination rears its allur-ing head in the form of a new sea-son of “Entourage”? All these ques-tions and more will be answered when you enroll at your college institution of choice. There comes

a time when you’ll have to make judgment calls like deciding whether you should attend your next class or cram for an impending test. These types of decisions that test your instincts will become second nature to the veteran student

as he or she learns to juggle an array of flaming obligations while travers-ing the tightrope of sanity.

Meeting a deadline in lieu of sleep: An average person needs roughly eight hours of sleep in or-der to be fully rested. Studies made up by my gut instinct show that the average college student gets a signif-icantly less amount of sleep. There have been periods in my college undertaking when I’ve gotten less than a day’s recommended amount of rest for an entire week because I had to meet multiple deadlines for school and work. Fortunately, B12 and caffeine were concocted to al-lot more hours in the day and in-stigate future cardiac arrests. The war against sleep deprivation rages on and you will find that your head weighs more than your entire body during classroom PowerPoint slides.

And as much as I hate to admit it, the staying-awake muscles you de-velop in college will be called upon for the rest of your life.

Communicating with superi-ors when things go wrong: People make mistakes — that much is in-evitable. Irrespective of what you may think, professors are also hu-man and understand that to err is to be a student. That being said, communication with professors will make the difference between a failing grade or an extension to the due date of a paper. In the same way you want to be on good terms with your managers and supervisors, you want to be on the same page with

your professors. That page is called “brown nosing.”

Teamwork in the academically honest sense of the term: As im-portant as it is to communicate with your professors, you also want to build rapport with your fellow classmates. Study groups and the sharing of notes are the only reason I’ve avoided academic probation. When you go to class, look at the person next to you. They’re in the same boat as you — help each other out. A tip for the guys: Find a fe-male study buddy. They make more informative and colorful study aids than we could ever hope to.

Hard work pays off: Much like the workforce, the person doing the best gets paid more and this can’t be any more evident than the process of scholarships in college. The bet-ter your grade the more likely you’ll receive more tuition assistance from the powers that be. The student who puts in the most work in class will also tend to get the most leeway and recognition from professors. That’s just the way it works — don’t hate the player, hate the game. And it is a game; don’t ever forget that because there’s no point in getting bent out of shape for something that’s really just a simulation for the real world.

If you’ve noticed, these tenets that I’ve mentioned can all be ap-plied in the job context.

When you commence your col-lege career, you initially learn from the courses you take. As you ven-ture closer and closer to the day

caps and gowns be-come fashionable, you start to learn about your own education in a more epistemological perspective.

Ultimately, college for me was one big les-son for the life I would have after college as a productive member of

society. I might have been studying English, history and science while failing math but in actuality I was learning life skills that would stay with me long after I depart this es-tablishment.

Anyone can pick up a book and begin to learn facts by rote. Going to college, though, prepares you for the real world, and that piece of paper you’re finally awarded serves as a seal of approval, ensur-ing companies that you’re cut out for employment because you’ve proved throughout the 18 years of your education that you can put in the time and effort despite the stress you encounter.

The Mercury is published on Mondays, at two-week intervals during the long term of The University of Texas at Dallas, except holidays and exam periods, and once every four weeks during the sum-mer term.

Advertising is accepted by The Mercury on the basis that there is no discrimination by the advertiser in the offering of goods or services to any person, on any basis prohibited by applicable law. Evidence of

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Copyright © 2011UT Dallas

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Editor-in-Chief Shane Damico

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Staff PhotographersAkshay HarsheBen Hawkins

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Rebecca DeButtsMedia AdviserChad Thomas

Like an episode of ‘Extreme Make-over,’ I’ve witnessed the visage of this campus transform from beldam to belle as it underwent the surgical preci-sion of construction crews.

“I just try to keep my money. I don’t think about it very much.”

Richard Green A&H senior

“I set certain amounts for the things I spend using a calendar.”

Steve Zapata ATEC freshman

“I create an Excel sheet and categorize it to make basic calculations.”

Anitha Kalaivanan Graduate student

“Open an account and keep track of my daily purchases in a notebook.”

Qiuhan Zhou Graduate student

“I always make sure not to buy stuff unless it’s necessary.”

Mike Larson CS freshman

“I mooch off my uncle — I live with him. I need to find a job soon.”

Anthony Phung Physics freshman

How do you manage your personalfinances from month to month?

Comet Comments

ContributorsAlison Kwong

Parinitha Vedpathak

OpinionTHE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM 5

A few words from SG’s new leaderB. SHARKEY-ANDREWSStudent Government President

When someone asks me how I think these next two semesters will pan out, I immediately think of three words: exciting, busy and fast.

These words could aptly de-scribe the tone not just of how quickly and in-teresting I feel my last year at UTD and with Student Government will be, but are more than adequate of the university as a whole.

By the end of my first year, the flowery Student Union mall where I’d attended “Rock the Vote” in the fall was replaced with bulldozers and mud, and the field next to my apartment had a nearly complete residence hall. Year two kicked off with freshmen shaking us out of our excite-ment about a dining hall with the reality that the hours,

well, weren’t the most conve-nient, and closed with an end to the over two-decade-long battle for alcohol in The Pub. From the whirlwind that was year three, emerged the completion of the Science

Learning Center, Student Services Building, a sec-ond residence hall and a visi-tors’ center com-plete with a col-lege bookstore. Not one of these projects broke

ground before I got here.Of course, the physical

advancements have not gone unmatched — or unchal-lenged — by our ever bulg-ing student population. Even as we threaten to tip the scale over 18,500 this fall, we re-main some of the most com-petitive and scholastically im-pressive students you’ll find in the state. From Fullbright and Truman recipients to students that juggle neurosci-ence studies and ASC cham-

pionships, we’ve got quite a group to brag about.

As exciting as the past three years have been, I have to ad-mit that I am thrilled this is my last. Part of that thrill is knowing how impactful this final year might be and how many opportunities students will have to be a part of it, especially if they give any no-tice to Student Government.

One of the challenges Student Government faces every year with our growing student body is simply keep-ing up. Forty two students to represent a few thousand is a challenge – forty two to represent several thousand growing exponentially in a short amount of time with little growing student in-volvement is just not feasible. For the past three years, it has too often been said, “Stu-dent Government does not represent me.” As someone who has had an exceptional experience and opportunity to change the campus for the better through years of Stu-

dent Government involve-ment, I personally accept the challenge. The challenge to show students that Student Government does work for them and is open to new ideas is at the forefront of conversations of change. Stu-dent Government’s role is to be the voice of the campus; however, we cannot do it alone. We need students to get involved and leave their

marks. This year has the po-tential to offer countless op-portunities.

And sure, we are address-ing the design of the fourth

residence hall to come and the Texas primary election in the spring, but especially noteworthy is the opportu-nity students have to leave a legacy at UTD.

Students serving on the Core Curriculum Commit-tee are going to examine and determine if the core, as it is now, is what students need. The current math and science requirements of the UTD

core face potential cuts which would possibly alter, for good or bad, the appearance of the studious stereotype every UTD student is emblazoned

with upon acceptance. Other students volunteering with Student Government com-mittees will find an issue ig-nited by passion and pursue it to the end, whether that’s another new minor, policy change, or, dear to my heart, more art installations on campus. These opportunities to get involved and leave tan-gible marks don’t exist with other campuses – and no other organization can help a student achieve these changes more than Student Govern-ment.

These are changes, of course, that not all of us will be able to stick around and watch happen — but maybe it’s finally our turn to bow out and let a new, younger audience be amazed by what UTD can do in a short amount of time.

So, how do I see these next two semesters going? As ex-citing as we make it, as busy as we can handle, and much faster than we’re able to real-ize.

These are changes, of course, that not all of us will be able to stick around and watch happen — but maybe it’s finally our turn to bow out and let a new, younger audience be amazed by what UTD can do in a short amount of time.

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NewsTHE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM 7

Enrollment grew by 8.5 percent from 2009 to 2010, and by 5.6 percent from 2008 to 2009.

“We are at a very good time in the history of UTD,” said James Wright, assistant vice president of Business Affairs. “At no point in its history have we as a university grown as fast, as comprehensive and with such great students

and faculty.”Some reasons for such

growth in enrollment, said Sheila Piñeres, dean of un-dergraduate studies, are UTD’s quality education, its Tier One initiative and its statewide and national recognition.

Another reason is the economy.

“So many students tradi-tionally, 10 years ago, may have gone to a different state (university), maybe abroad, but now they can’t go,” she said. “To our ad-

vantage they know all about us, we are not this best- kept secret anymore.”

In other words, UTD offers a quality education for a low price, in part prompting enrollment growth.

“I would say we have gotten our message out, all of the Tier One public-ity and it’s the fact that the economy has precluded students, and I put the economy last, from going to out-of-state universi-ties,” Pineres said.

mits. After restriping is com-

plete, parking lots Q, M-North and the new M-West will have spaces for purple, orange, gold and green per-mits, and M-East will have spaces for gold and green per-mits only.

“We (met) with Dean

Pirkul (of SOM). He wanted to reallocate the colors; he wanted everyone to be able to use each door,” Smith said. “So instead of faculty and staff coming in through the back door (from Lot Q), he would like them to have the opportunity to use the front doors.”

Both the restriping of the parking lots near SOM and the construction of M-West will be complete by about

mid-September and will add an estimated 25 purple, 14 orange, 114 gold, 100 green and 10 handicap spots to campus.

The SOM parking area will receive four additional motor-cycle parking spaces in lot M-North and 29 “Pay-by-Space” spots near the entrance of the SOM. “Pay-by-Space” spots will allow visitors to pay for parking by credit card at a pay station near their car.

ENROLLMENTcontinued from page 1

PARKINGcontinued from page 1

sponsored projects.“UTD has been really for-

tunate to get major research contracts, and we’re support-ing a large number of ATEC students and computer sci-ence students to work on these projects (but) we’re so congested that we’re look-ing for little spaces where 20 and 30 can work intensively,” Linehan said. “The prospect of this new building contain-ing large research labs would

(better allow students to) do some of the cultural training that (they’re) currently doing for the U.S. Army and (medi-cal sciences).”

The building will also showcase a 1,200-seat lecture hall, more than twice the size of the Clark Center’s 500-seat auditorium. The hall will be used to feature guest speak-ers, student presentations and possibly be used for events such as freshmen orientation, Dempsey said.

Visual Arts students will re-ceive an upgrade in the form of a larger art gallery and

more space for classroom in-struction, Linehan said.

The current Visual Arts building, commonly known as the Art Barn, was never intended to be a long-term space, Dempsey said. The new gallery will be located at the front of the ATEC build-ing, alongside the SU Mall, so students can view the artwork as they walk by.

“The School of Arts & Hu-manities is a major initiative for UT Dallas,” Linehan said. “We’ve doubled the school’s (size) and we’re going to con-tinue to (increase it).”

ATECcontinued from page 1

OFFICE OF FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

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NewsTHE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM 9Fundraising, networking among alumni increaseUTD witnesses record-breaking donations in consecutive yearsANWESHA BHATTACHARJEEMercury Staff

Due to a concerted effort by the university towards the de-velopment of alumni relations, 2010 was a record-breaking fundraising year for UTD with more than $40 million in do-norship, UTD officials said.

The university’s Office of Development and Alumni Re-lations currently has more than 66,000 alumni in its database, said Erin Dougherty, director of Alumni Relations and An-nual Giving. Three times a year, the Office of Alumni Relations contacts alumni by phone as part of annual giving to ask for financial support and to update

their contact information, she said.

But the alumni are not just giving back financially; they’re also giving their time through volunteerism, Dougherty said.

The Office of Alumni Rela-tions has a Regional Repre-sentative program, which is a group of UTD alumni who have moved from the Metro-plex to some other region or country, she said.

These individual alumni represent the university in their own community and make their information public on UTD’s alumni website so that any alumni moving to their re-gion can contact them for help.

“(Last week, Zhou ‘Joseph’

Li) the regional representative from Beijing, China, randomly stopped by my office — he was in the area … and he just came in and we started talking,” Dougherty said. “He’s been contacted by three alumni just in the last year who moved to Beijing, and he said he played a role in helping two of them find jobs.”

Recently, alumni who live near the Metroplex and want to help out in events on campus have contacted Dougherty.

“In terms of alumni, I think some of the biggest contribu-tions (to the UTD communi-ty) have been how many alum-ni are getting involved now,” Dougherty said. “We also had

one young alumni who con-tacted us and she’s going to come out for Welcome Week and do face painting. She’s also interested in volunteering for other events.”

The university has set up donor societies to recognize alumni who give back to the university consistently. As part of the process of appreciation for donors, the Office of Devel-opment and Alumni Relations will be organizing an event called “Celebration of Sup-port” on Sept. 15. At the event, the university will, for the first time, award and recognize do-nors who have given to the uni-versity at any level in the past year, Dougherty said.

As part of a move to initiate better networking among its alumni, the School of Manage-ment, or SOM, has an alumni network called “PowerGrid.”

“(PowerGrid) came about because the SOM did not have its own alumni networking event that we hold regularly,” said Kyle Edgington, director of Development and Alumni Relations for SOM. “The school itself has 26,000 alumni, of which 16,000 live and work in the DFW or Dallas area. Not having an alumni event is not taking advantage of the power-ful network.”

The SOM is the largest school by enrollment and turns out more than 2,000 students each year, Edgington said.

As the culture among alumni changes and more traditional students graduate out of the SOM, the Office of Alumni Relations hopes to tap into the younger alumni and involve them in PowerGrid, he said.

The first event organized by PowerGrid was in summer 2009 and, until this year, the SOM organized a PowerGrid alumni meet each month. This year onwards, PowerGrid will meet four times a year.

While the turnout at most of the events is about 60-70 alumni, the quarterly meetings have had a better turnout than the previous monthly meetings, Edgington said.

The next PowerGrid event will be on Sept. 8 in the Mc-Dermott Suite where UTD President David Daniel will

give an address. Not all events have a formal

setting. One of the previous meets this year was organized at a restaurant downtown owned and run by an alumna and her husband, Edgington said.

PowerGrid is trying to grow its web presence to make it more viable for alumni, he said.

“We also have a Linkedin network of alumni and we’re wondering whether we should fold that in to the university alumni Linkedin group or if we should keep it separate,” said Doug Eckel, associate dean of the SOM. “We’re still looking into how to use social media sites for alumni relations (al-though) we haven’t used it very much yet.”

In an attempt to capitalize on its alumni, the university is encouraging more alumni chapters to open up, said Erin Dougherty, director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving.

Although PowerGrid is the only program specific alumni chapter that exists, it may not stay so for long.

Eckel was recently ap-proached by the Indian Student Association, or ISA, to organize an alumni event for the Indian alumni of UTD, so that current and past Indian students can start a network of professionals.

“(The ISA president) came to us and said he’d like to have an Indian graduate alumni gathering and we feel that that’s really appropriate too,” Eckel said.

No date has been set for this meeting yet, it will likely be scheduled in September, offi-cials said.

Group connects SOM graduates

OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI RELATIONS

Dean Dennis Kratz (center) sits with several UTD alumni during the Signature Summer Alumni Event at the Dallas Arboretum on June 2. The annual summer event is organized by the Office of Development and Alumni Relations.

ANWESHA BHATTACHARJEEMercury Staff

News WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM THE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 201110A&H to drop grad teaching program starting fall 2014REBECCA DEBUTTSMercury Staff

The School of Arts & Hu-manities has announced that it will drop its Masters of Arts in Teaching, or MAT from its graduate program.

The reason according to Dennis Kratz, dean of the school of Arts & Humanities, is that there simply are not enough students showing in-terest in the program.

“We did not have anywhere near the enrollment to jus-tify the courses we had to of-fer and the people we had to hire,” Kratz said. “At the mo-ment there are only two stu-dents in the MAT program.”

The students currently par-ticipating in the MAT pro-gram will be allowed to finish their degrees before it is offi-cially dropped.

Kratz said the MAT will be removed from the next course catalogue.

The Masters of Arts in Hu-manities that is offered has been adapted to appeal to a wider range of students and has therefore, become the more popular option.

There are two options for the Masters of Arts in Hu-manities, one catering to those interested in continuing to doctoral studies and the other for those who just want a master’s degree.

Many of the professors, as well as students, preferred the MA option to the MAT for these reasons.

“The MAT as a degree lost its appeal to our students when the MA became an ac-ceptable alternative,” Kratz said.

The option in the MA that does not require a thesis proved more popular than the MAT. The loss of this pro-gram, Krtaz said, does not reflect the state of the Arts & Humanities.

BEN HAWKINS/STAFF

The Welcome Center (bottom) opened on Aug. 1, and contains a new campus bookstore (left, above) along with a coffee shop, UTD technol-ogy store and the Visitor Center.

Welcome Center, bookstore unveiled

NewsTHE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM 1111

A fresh start for UTD freshmen

Sweet Home UTD

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

(Top) Students and familiy members endure the heat while moving student belongings into the fresh-men residence halls during Move-in Day on Aug. 16. (Above) Students and family members take a lunch break, enjoying catered food.

(Above) Student Sen-ator Raj Shah helps a student haul belong-ings into the fresh-man residence hall during Move-in Day on Aug. 16. During this event members of student organiza-tions are allowed to help with move-in that provides a good opportunity to meet and interact with the new freshmen class. (Right) Jessica Ma-zina, an ATEC major, checks that her mail-box key is in work-ing order on Aug. 16. Students moving into the freshmen resi-dence halls must pro-cess in by registering and signing for room and mailbox keys.

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

ALBERT RAMIREZ/STAFF

(Left) ATEC freshman Devin Butler carries ar-ticles to his new room as family members and student volunteers help out during move-in day on Aug. 16. Be-low, Austin native So-phia Periar muscles a box with a friend to her room. Periar said she was excited to start a new life at UTD.

ALBERT RAMIREZ/STAFF(Above) Freshman Albert Thomas, a biochemistry major, signs for his room keys a part of the last step of his in-processing to the Residence Hall during Move-in Day on Aug. 16. (Below) Neuroscience freshman Jerry Jewell settles in his room enjoying a break from a hectic day by practicing bass guitar on Aug 16.

Advertisement WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM THE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 201112

In the midst of war-torn Yugoslavia Rade Milovanovic was faced with a decision: leave his parents, well-estab-lished law career and home behind, or try to save his daughter.

Marina, Milovanovic’s teenage daughter, was waging her own war with Friedreich’s ataxia: a rare disorder that can cause the body to breakdown while the mind stays intact.

The United States offered not only safety from the war but the necessary disability services and health care that couldn’t be found in Yugoslavia.

“(My wife and I) noticed (prob-lems) when Marina was six. She was very healthy, then suddenly something (changed),” Milovanovic said. “So we decided we were going to the United States. It didn’t matter (what we did) as long as we helped her.”

Although he knew he would no longer be able to practice law into the States, Milovanovic said it didn’t mat-ter.

And though he had formerly been on track to move from his Internation-al chess master title to grand master, he said it didn’t matter.

He and his family filed for refugee status and were able to live anywhere in the States, but they had to start over from scratch. The family asked to live somewhere with warm weather to aid their daughter’s health problems, and Dallas was where they were placed.

Milovanovic remembers arriving near the end of the summer in the middle of the day, and he could barely believe a place could get that hot.

Once the family got into Dallas, Milovanovic gave chess lessons when he could while his wife worked at Target. They did whatever they could to make ends meet while still seeking health care for Marina.

“I didn’t care what I was going to do, I only (cared to) help my daughter. So it was the decision that we made and I (don’t) regret it,” Milovanovic said. “I think if you’re a parent you have to do everything to help your kids — (no) matter what.”

Shorty after the fam-ily got their bearings in Dallas, Milovanovic began searching for a local chess circuit. One day he was told about a tournament, and by co-incidence he ended up at an individual match that took place at the same time and same hotel UTD’s chess team was playing.

That was the day Milovanovic made his first connection with UTD. About a year later he was hired as the team coach. Since that time UTD’s chess team has become one of the best in the nation.

In the time he has been coach, the team has travelled across the world for competitions, winning titles in state-wide, national and international com-petitions.

Milovanovic said he never imag-

ined turning his hobby into a profes-sion, but he is pleased with the way it worked out.

Everything seemed to be going well for the Milovanovics until Marina passed away at the age of 28. Two years later, the loss still hurts Milovanovic deeply. When he talks about Marina, his stern exterior fades away and a softer side emerges.

“This is the main reason we decided to come to (America), because here medicine is very good. She was happy when she was alive,” he said. “I am still

emotional. I try to overcome (it). She was happy and she lived because (we came here).”

Teaching chess is still a passion for Milovanovic, which shows through his team’s winning record and respect for him.

“You want to win for him. You definitely want to do your best for your school and for Rade,” said Tyler Hughes, two-year chess team member.

Hughes describes Milovanovic as gruff, yet warm, and says the team

benefits from his openness to new ideas and even appreciates his quirks.

“If you tell him about (one) thing it usually reminds him of something else,” Hughes said. “He tells a lot of stories.”

Hughes is a molecular biology se-nior and a self-acclaimed perfection-ist. While in school his perfectionism serves him well, but in chess he has “time trouble,” meaning he doesn’t manage the clock well in a chess match, which can often lead to run-ning out of time and result in losses.

“I remember talking to Rade about (time trouble) and he told me perfec-tion is good in academ-ics, but on the chessboard you have to be practical,” Hughes remembered with a smile. “I had a great tournament after that.”

Through all the good and the bad, Milovanovic says he’s happy. His career

has seen little but success and his other daughter, Kristina, received her mas-ter’s degree from UTD in 2009 and this July she married the roommate of a former chess player.

“This UTD stuff (just happened), but you know, you have to try to do (your) best, to put a lot of love (into everything), to say ‘OK, I did every-thing I could, I do not regret any-thing,’” Milovanovic said. “I am very thankful to this country for every-thing.”

L&A AUG. 22, 2011 n THE MERCURY n WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM 13

a day agreeing to house one student with them for a few days.

But even if the temporary hous-ing situation is resolved with the help of a few generous individuals, the shortage of permanent housing on campus will continue as very few new international students have been able to find on-campus apartments this year.

Living off campus: Housing and safety

Officials with FACSS and ISA say they are concerned that there is not enough permanent housing on campus to accommodate the grow-ing number of graduate students.

“The only places where our stu-dents have been able to find apart-ments are at Preston Road and Frankford Road — there are still some vacancies there,” Gao said. “But we cannot recommend these locations to our students because the 883 (bus route) does not go there.”

At present the university has no plans to build more graduate or upperclassman housing, said Matt Grief, assistant vice president for Student Affairs. He said his office is working together with the Inter-national Student Services Office, or ISSO, to put up a list on the ISSO website with housing locations around campus that are on the 883, 362 or 350 DART routes.

Vijayaraghavam said students are having a hard time finding off-cam-pus apartments close to campus making it tough for the students to settle down or find on-campus jobs. Another concern that ISA has is the safety situation off cam-pus, especially when students who don’t have cars need to take evening classes, he said.

“Students living off campus have a tough time moving around on

weekends,” Vijayaraghavam said. “They cannot make use of most of the facilities the university has dur-ing weekends, especially Sundays.”

Many students who need to ac-cess facilities on campus at night walk back home to their off-cam-pus apartments alone, which is when isolated incidents can hap-pen, he said.

“We suggest our new students not to go out alone in the evenings and try to take the bus or to go out with other students,” Gao said.

The ISSO and UTD Police De-partment are working together to increase safety awareness among international students.

“We’re working with (UTD Po-lice Chief Larry Zacharias) to pro-vide a seminar in the fall about safe-ty on campus,” said Cristen Casey, director of ISSO. “He comes to all of our new student orientations, he speaks to us there — we’re really encouraging students, when they have safety concerns, to report it so that he can be more aware when there are problems, and can address it in a more systematic way.”

International population growth trends

Casey and Grief agreed that de-spite the pressure on campus re-sources due to more international students, university officials are excited about the growth in enroll-ment at UTD.

Of the new students that are coming in, the number of Chinese students attending UTD has gone up drastically in the past couple of years, Casey said.

“In my opinion (the increase in numbers is because) the School of Management does a lot of pro-motion all over China,” said Liu. “They give scholarships to Chinese students and the tuition here is rel-atively cheaper than other univer-sities and the living expense is less

ALBERT RAMIREZ/STAFF

Rade Milovanovic, international chess master, joined the UTD staff as chess coach after leaving his country of Yugoslavia during its war. That was 10 years ago, and while much has changed Milovanovic’s love of chess has not.

HOUSINGcontinued from page 1

Craving diversity, less is more when studying overseasCulture shock in the United States provided opportunity for self-discoveryANWESHA BHATTACHARJEEMercury Staff

It’s that time of year again when the campus is filling back up, freshmen are mov-ing in and bus loads of international students are stepping onto Texas soil for perhaps the first time in their lives.

Watching the sun rise on another glorious August morning volun-teering on one such bus from the airport, with excited conversation milling around me, I found myself remembering my very first day in the

United States. Well, technically, all I recall from

that day is feeling tired and grimy after almost 26 hours of flying trans-Atlan-

tic from India via Frank-furt. Hot wind flapped across my face as I rode to campus in a volunteer’s poorly air conditioned car, yet at the same time I felt grateful for the large and helpful Indian pres-ence at UTD.

Coming from a coun-try where terrorism has led to rigid, gated secu-rity in the smallest of

shopping complexes, I was awestruck by UTD’s immensely liberating open

campus. For Indians, coming to UTD is like

stepping into a mini-India. One out of every 10 students is Indian, almost the entire crowd on the 883 bus is Indian and the same can be said for the ma-jority of student workers in the Comet Café.

UTD felt so much like India that when I saw the orange, green and white balloons at the international stu-dent orientation, I thought they were in honor of the Indian flag which has those three colors on it.

Within one day of my overseas ad-venture I had already met more than 100 of my countrymen. We were all learning together to smile at random passersby — Texas style — holding

doors open for others behind us, wait-ing in line for our turn and walking on sidewalks. We were also learning that the 883 wasn’t our average overcrowd-ed Indian city bus, and you didn’t have to stand up before the bus came to a stop because you didn’t have to elbow your way out. We were still convert-ing the American dollar to 50 Indian Rupees and trying not to drive on the wrong side of the road.

When university officials spoke about experiencing culture shock at the International Students Orienta-tion, I was grinning, thinking I had already blended in. I wasn’t lonely and culture shock symptoms really did not seem to apply to me.

Typically this feeling of excitement

is, indeed, the first symptom of culture shock. Many international students don’t realize they’re in culture shock until stage two, when they have bursts of loneliness for their homeland, get depressed at the lack of familiar cui-sine, language and environment — even entertainment.

For me, culture shock came, but not in its usual form. I wasn’t missing my city, my friends or my language. I was, however, adjusting to an unexpected sensation of claustrophobia amongst the overwhelming number of Indians on campus.

Having more people who shared the same country as me wasn’t helping me

see HOME page 14

BEN HAWKINS/STAFF

Emily Elbert performs at the Comet Night Summer Concert host-ed by SUAAB and Radio UTD on Aug. 17. Elbert was one of two acts who performed in the Student Union Mall.

Summer night sing

Moving forwardChess coach’s journey to UTDJESSICA MELTONMercury Staff

COMMENTARY

It was the decision that we made and I (don’t) regret it,” Milovanovic said. “I think if you’re a parent you have to do everything to help your kids. (No) matter what.

— Rade Milovanovic

see HOUSING page 14

L&A WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM THE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 201114

learn more or to diversify my outlook or attitude. I was still uber-conscious of how my put-on accent would be ridiculed by my friends, how men would stare at me if I tried experimenting with new clothes, makeup or hairstyle.

The more time I spent on campus, the more I felt as though I needed to change my outer self to blend in better in this country, but couldn’t for fear of being judged by my own countrymen. This dilem-

ma made me over-sensitive and uncomfortable with my-self, an issue the confident me of before had never faced.

Around October, my worst fears were coming true. I was losing my assertiveness in my academics, at work and with my friends.

I was stuck in a massive warp of self-discovery, or so I thought, then.

By the time winter rolled over into spring, I was at an all-time low on confidence, and school wasn’t a success story for me anymore.

In India, you don’t get to observe spring much because

it’s more like a cusp of win-ter and summer, with strong winds that grow progressively warmer and a sun that glares down stronger each day.

Here though, spring is a separate season altogether. It isn’t so much a harbinger of hot summers as it is a time of bloom, fresh colors and com-ing out of hibernation.

Every time I felt the spring breeze graze my cheek and swish by, it was like an elixir that brought me to life again — I understood who I was within and regained the con-fidence to just be me.

I realized that while having

people who share your heri-tage and country matter, what matters more is that you are with people who understand you and your opinion just as you understand them. Lan-guage, religion and culture differences are rarely barriers to thought sharing, and living in a cosmopolitan nation like the United States allows you to appreciate not just other people and cultures but also your own so much more.

I finally figured that no matter how I speak or dress, people at work were going to respect my opinion, as long as I spoke meaningfully. I also

realized that here, it isn’t who you are initially that matters but who you’ve become over time. If you’re working, and if you take criticism positively, you can only do well. People in this country don’t care if you’re a die-hard romance fan or an obsessive Mavs fan as long as you’re sincere in your passion.

And in this entire process of breaking out of my make belief cocoon, I found that I didn’t have to change myself after all.

I’ve spent a little more than a year in this country, and I’ve traveled to India twice in be-

tween. In just this time, I have learned to define individuals by their quirks and quaint-ness. I don’t judge those who are unlike me anymore, nei-ther do I build castles of ha-tred around pre-conceived notions. I don’t try to map or rank people and nations. My acceptance of diversity has taught me to enjoy my homeland afresh every time I go back.

A year back I thought India would always be my home and the United States my learning ground. Today, I have a tough time deciding which is which.

HOMEcontinued from page 13

HOUSINGcontinued from page 13

than in other cities like New York or Chicago.”

Another reason is that the Chinese economy is booming and a lot of parents can afford to send their child abroad for high-er education, Gao said. There is also a popular website — www.chasedream.com — which most students follow that provides information about how to come to the United States, she said.

More international students means more research productiv-ity for UTD and takes the uni-versity a step closer to becoming world class, Casey said.

“There are people who go to school here who’ve never trav-elled outside of Texas and by be-ing in classes with people from all around the world, they have an opportunity that’s almost like going on a foreign study trip,” Casey said. “One of UTD’s commitments is to become a world class institution that in-volves engaging with diverse groups of people and being able to think outside the box, and I think international students bring that to our campus.”

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

Luojun Wang, Accounting & Information Management graduate student, steps off the bus that took her from the airport to her new home after a 28-hour flight from Shanghai, China, Aug. 5.

L&ATHE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM 15

AKSHAY HARSHE/STAFF

Dean James Marquart oversees the School of Econom-ics, Political & Policy Sciences. Prior to coming to UTD, he worked as a correctional officer in Texas for two years.

Faces of change: from inmates to studentsDean of EPPS shares anecdotes from his time working in Texas correctional facilities

ANWESHA BHATTACHARJEEMercury Staff

Delivering flowers, super-vising prisoners, teaching criminology and now serving as dean to one of UTD’s aca-demic programs — this man has done it all.

James Marquart, dean of School of Economics, Po-litical & Policy Sciences, or EPPS, said growing up he didn’t know he was going to be a dean, or even be in aca-demia.

Marquart grew up in Chi-cago and went to Western Illinois University for his un-dergraduate degree. As part of his degree program, he was required to do an internship and said it was through this internship that he became in-terested in research in crimi-nology and prison systems.

“As an undergraduate I did an internship at a state school for boys and girls,” Marquart said. “These were kids that had committed felonies so they were serious — you can’t call them criminals, simply adjudicated delinquents — but they had committed mur-der, manslaughter.”

Marquart went on to com-plete his master’s degree from Kansas State University in so-ciology and had applied for a job with the Federal Bureau of Prisons but when he received a teaching assistantship from Texas A&M University he saw it as opportunity for re-search and moved to Texas for his Ph.D degree instead.

His first summer with the Ph.D program, he worked with correctional officers as part of a research project. Marquart visited the correc-tional facilities at Ellis, East-ham and Ferguson to see how they operated and to meet the inmates.

During the last two years of his Ph.D, Marquart worked as a correctional officer at the Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.

“I think I became attached to some of (the convicts)...” he said. “The officers were great but it was the inmates who really helped me to un-derstand how these places were managed.”

After receiving his Ph.D, Marquart’s first academic po-sition was at Mississippi State University, but after a few years he moved back to Texas to teach at Sam Houston State University. One of the reasons

for moving back to Texas was because his wife is from Texas, he said. However, Texas was also a good place to study the changes taking place in the prison systems, he said.

In 2005, Marquart came to UTD to lead the criminol-ogy program in EPPS. He was also appointed associate provost in 2008, and finally as dean of EPPS in 2010.

Among the people who played a defining role in Mar-quart’s life was former execu-tive director of the prison sys-tem in Texas, George Betl.

Marquart met Betl during his first summer in Texas in 1979, when his adviser asked him to take two classes taught by Betl at Sam Houston State University.

It was Betl who got him interested in research on the death penalty. Betl encour-aged him to look at issues that no one had worked on before.

One such issue that they looked at was the state of pris-oners on death row during and after the moratorium of 1965 to 1972.

“He just had a great mind and good ideas,” Marquart said. “He was instrumental in opening doors for people, try-ing to help people take a look at some (research) issues that others had not really looked at.”

For research purposes, Marquart continued visiting the correctional units.

The facilities were going through desegregation at the time so that inmates would

no longer be assigned to cells by race, but randomly. Mar-quart said he witnessed these changes first hand and wrote a book on it called “First Available Cell: Racial Deseg-regation and the Erosion of the Color Line in the Texas Prison System.”

“I was on hand to see his-tory occur,” Marquart said. “I chanced to see a lot of those old ways break down — it was fascinating.”

Marquart said he never felt threatened moving around among inmates, even in buildings as violent as Ellis. However, there were numer-ous killings within units at the time, as the big gangs were coming in then.

His visits to these units and the changes that he witnessed led Marquart to research legal changes in prison organiza-tions and the potential im-pact of court rulings on the administration and manage-ment of these places.

When he first came to UTD, he chaired the crimi-nology program here. He worked to expand the already thriving undergraduate pro-gram into a graduate one, Marquart said.

“The most exciting thing to me is to make this a destina-tion point for students at the undergraduate and the gradu-ate level, and then add, attract and retain the best qualified faculty we can to deliver the best education experience we can for them, so it’s an excit-ing time,” Marquart said.

Marquart said he believes keeping students motivated to study is the biggest chal-lenge for educators today.

“Back then it was just go-ing to the classroom, deliver the thing and we were done but today the pace of change is global, all of this is just a confluence and we’re not go-ing to be able to be inoculated from that,” he said. “I think everybody (is) having to deal with the scope and pace of change — it’s just enormous.”

As dean of EPPS, Marquart said he wants to help the pro-gram grow and improve by adding more resources and helping foster research in is-sues that are relevant today.

“I’m trying to do the same thing that other people did for me,” he said. “(Betl) opened up doors and people here opened up doors, and I think that’s all you try to do.”

These were kids that had committed felonies so they were serious — you can’t call them criminals, simply adju-dicated delinquents, but they had com-mitted murder, man-slaughter.

SportsWWW.UTDMERCURY.COM n THE MERCURY n AUG. 22, 2011 16

UTD will gain a new conference adversary this fall, after the American Southwest Conference, added Cente-nary College of Louisiana to the East Division.

Centenary, a private liberal arts col-lege in Shreveport, La., competed in The Summit League at the Division I level in all sports until officially joining the ASC on July 1.

The school announced its intention to leave Division I in July 2009 and was accepted into the ASC in April 2010, according to the ASC’s website. Centenary’s four-year transition into Division III began in Sept. 2010.

Although Centenary will not be able to compete in postseason play in any of its 13 athletic programs for its first three seasons in the conference, UTD head volleyball coach Marci Sanders said wins and losses against the “Gents” and “Ladies” of Centenary will count in the standings.

With just 887 undergraduates, Cen-tenary was among the smallest of all Division I members. David Rowe, the school’s president, announced the col-lege would phase out 22 of its majors during the next few years — amount-ing to half the majors, according to ABC TV affiliate KTBS in Shreveport. Rowe said in his interview with the news station that Centenary has been “spreading (its) resources quite thin.”

Since it was announced that the pri-vate United Methodist school would drop down two rungs in the NCAA ladder, athletic director Tom Tallach and head basketball coach Greg Gary have departed, according to reports by The Shreveport Times, which also reported that since the transition was announced, several important athletes transferred to other D-I programs, leaving Centenary with rosters largely made up of D-III recruits playing at the highest level of collegiate athletics. This proved to be a huge setback for the basketball program last season, as the Gents posted a measly 1-29 record in 2010-11.

The move expands the ASC to a 16-team conference while McMurry attempts to reclassify to Division II. During the process, McMurry will still compete in the ASC, according to the conference’s website.

Comets toface new ASC foe

BOBBY KARALLAManaging Editor

D-I school joins UTD’s athletics division in 2011

Coach brings passion, knowledge to programPosner’s past successes make future promisingBOBBY KARALLAManaging Editor

Brad Posner has been a coach his entire life. Softball may be his pas-sion, but teaching is his calling.

Posner was named UTD’s head softball coach July 5. For Posner, it is yet another opportunity in his career to influence minds and leave his mark on young adults’ lives, the first of which came at too young an age in a stressful situation.

Born in Suffern, N.Y., a town near New York City, Posner had a love for baseball. His father was the assistant district attorney in the Bronx, with an office overlooking right-center field at the old Yankee Stadium. Posner said he caught games all the time, whether it was looking out his dad’s office window or sitting in the bleachers after po-lice officers let him in.

He earned acceptance into the University of Buffalo, but tragedy struck early in his life when his fa-ther passed away during Posner’s freshman year. His mother took on two jobs to make ends meet and Posner was forced to move home

and take care of his younger broth-er. Posner said he assumed a paren-tal role while raising his brother and did a fair job at it — his brother received an academic scholarship to Cornell University, his late father’s alma mater. His brother is now a financial planner in New York City.

Rather than immediately going back to school, Posner took a job at a juvenile delinquent rehabilitation facility, where he could further his teaching interest. At night when the delinquent kids would go to bed, Posner would take online courses and in 2008 graduated with a bach-elor’s in psychology with honors. Though academics was a huge part of his life, Posner still had a yearn-ing to coach.

His first softball coaching gig came when a friend started a soft-ball program at a low-budget, ur-ban school. He and Posner built the team from the junior high level to the varsity level in three years. Posner said at the time he took the job, most of the girls did not even have a glove, let alone any knowl-edge of softball. His new team lost

nearly every game against wealthier, more experienced travel teams, but Posner said the lone win during his last season there was an incredibly happy and memorable experience not just for the players, but also for him. He’d discovered his career.

“I coach softball and get to work with phenomenal, talented athletes and students who are just great peo-ple,” he said. “I get to go recruiting on the weekends to watch younger players play… It’s a great job. Yeah, there’s paperwork and other stuff that goes along with the territory, but at the end of the day I just re-ally love what I do. I wish everyone could find that.”

Posner visited Cortland Uni-versity in the late ’90s and visited with head coach Julie Lenhart — one of few D-III softball coaches with more than 600 wins. Lenhart had heard of what Posner did at the high school and suggested he stay and help out with the team. Two days later, Posner signed a volunteer

see POSNER page 18

MERCURY FILE PHOTO

Coming off a 24-6 2010, the Lady Comets volleyball team will begin its 2011 season on Sept. 1 against the University of Dallas. Its home opener will be Sept. 16 against LeTourneau at the Activity Center at 7 p.m.

Volleyball seeks out sixth titleWomen begin season Sept. 1 at U. of DallasBOBBY KARALLAManaging Editor

MERCURY FILE PHOTO

UTD’s men’s soccer team finished 12-5-2 in 2010 before losing in the ASC Semi-Finals. The Comets return five of their top six scorers from last year’s team. Their first exhibition match is Sept. 1 against NE Texas CC at 7 p.m., and their first official match is Sept. 3 at 6 p.m.

Soccer set to kick off 2011 runReturning core gives head coach luxury to adjust, experiment with starting lineup

The UTD men’s soccer team has begun preparations for what head coach Jack Peel hopes to be the pro-gram’s fourteenth consecutive win-ning season.

Coming off a 12-5-2 mark and a run to the conference semi-finals in 2010, the Comets look poised to make another strong run their 2011 campaign, which kicks off Sept. 1 in an exhibition match against Northeast Texas Community College. UTD’s first official game comes two days later against the University of LaVerne.

A majority of the starters will return to Peel’s team this season, including five of the six top scorers from last season’s squad. The Comets lost a few important leaders to graduation, including goalkeeper Bailey Williams — whose six clean sheets were fourth-most in the American Southwest Conference — and defender Jorge Morales — whose on-field presence will be missed, Peel said.

“Jorge was the inspirational leader of the team,” he said. “He was that

tough guy that when things got nasty and kind of ugly, he was there to take care of it. It’ll be tough… replacing him.”

Notable returners include forward Michael Darrow, who gained valu-able experience with a local club at a national tournament, Peel said. Darrow scored four goals and tal-lied three assists last season. Also returning is workhorse Eric Holland — who logged the second-most minutes among Comet outfield-ers in 2010, and last season’s lead-ing goal-scorers Ryan Courson and Brian Bienhoff.

Peel said experience will be the strength of this year’s squad. Twen-ty of last year’s 30 roster members played at least 400 minutes. Peel said he tries to use his team’s depth to keep everyone fresh through the warmer months and to avoid wearing out the players before the conference tournament.

In 2010, UTD outscored its oppo-nents by a modest 9-6 margin in the first half of games, but improved

see SOCCER page 18

BOBBY KARALLAManaging Editor

The Lady Comets volleyball team will set out for another division title Sept. 1 when they take on the Uni-versity of Dallas Crusaders.

UTD has won four consecutive outright division titles under head coach Marci Sanders, after sharing one in 2006. In that span, the Lady Comets have won at least 21 games each season and have taken home two American Southwest Confer-ence championships.

In 2010, UTD finished 24-6 overall and won 16 of 17 confer-ence games. The lone loss came to Hardin-Simmons, the same school to knock the Lady Comets out of the conference semi-finals.

ASC coaches and sports informa-tion directors have tabbed UTD the preseason favorites to win the divi-sion, garnering 11 of 14 first-place

votes, according to the conference’s website. Sanders, however, said five in a row is not the main goal for this year’s squad.

“Hopefully (we’ll be No.) 1, so that

we get to host our tournament, but we just got to get these kids to come to-gether early because they’re so young,” she said, referring to her roster.

The Lady Comets graduated three

four-year starters last season, includ-ing Amber Wetz, Jessica Nassau and All-American setter Niki Calverley.

see VOLLEYBALL page 18

• 436-130-2 record as as-sistant at Cortland Univ.

• 8 trips to NCAA D-III National Tournament

• 11 of his 12 seasons, team hit .300 or better

• 5-time D-III Northeast Region Coaching Staff of the Year

BY THE NUMBERS

BEN HAWKINS/STAFF

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SOCCERcontinued from page 16

VOLLEYBALLcontinued from page 16

To fill the void, Sanders has added 10 new players to the team, making this year’s roster her biggest ever.

“In order for us to be as good as we need to be at the end, we’re going to have to get more kids playing early,” she said. More than half the lineup will be made up of new players.

This year’s batch of freshmen is made up almost exclusively of high school graduates with All-District and All-State tal-ent, and two JUCO transfers, one of which won a National Championship at Brookhaven College.

Calverley’s national success in 2010 makes her shoes the biggest to fill. The setter aver-aged the second-most assists per set in all of D-III last sea-son and was also the leader of the team on and off the court. Sanders said Calverley would stay on as a student assistant this year, which will be benefi-cial to freshmen Hayden Hig-gins and Chelsea McHenry, both recruited to fill the void left by one of the country’s pre-

mier setters.Of all the freshmen in the

class, Sanders’ highest hopes rest with Higgins. The Boerne na-tive collected All-Area and All-State honors in high school and was named district MVP once. Sanders praised Higgins’ work ethic and said the freshman is eager to learn from Calverley.

“If I had to go out on a limb right now, I’d say she’s probably going to be the best setter in the conference,” Sanders said.

In addition to the roster’s youth, Sanders said this year’s Lady Comets team will be the tallest she’s had at UTD, which she hopes will turn blocking into a strength rather than a weakness. Last season, UTD finished third in the conference in blocks, its lowest in any ma-jor statistical category.

Sanders said aside from the internal changes to the pro-gram including team youth and height, the ASC East will be vastly different this season.

UT Tyler, Mary Hardin-Baylor and LeTourneau all hired new head coaches in the offseason. The two latter schools were picked to finish sixth and seventh in the divi-sion respectively, but UT Tyler

was chosen by coaches to place third in the East.

New coaches bring new sys-tems to the program, which Sanders said could make ad-justments tough for opponents. She also said each of the three new coaches have been ag-gressive on the recruiting trail, which will make the conference deeper and more challenging.

In addition to the new head coaches, Centenary College of Louisiana will also be joining the division. Centenary won just three matches last season and dropped a match to Le-Tourneau, but Sanders said the school still has D-I talent. The “Ladies” were chosen fourth in the division for 2011.

The Lady Comets begin their 2011 campaign Sept. 1 in an exhibition match against the University of Dallas, before heading to St. Louis for four matches, including one against host Washington University in St. Louis, a program which has won two national champion-ships in the past four seasons. Following those matches, UTD will begin its conference sched-ule Sept. 13 at Mary Hardin-Baylor. Its first home match is Sept. 16 against LeTourneau.

that differential to 19-9 after the intermission. The Comets also allowed less shots and took more in the second half, and they committed fewer fouls. Peel attributes the second half strength to his players’ smarts and fitness.

“The majority of the players were younger guys,” he said. “You’ve got to let them know what’s happening. You make

those adjustments that need to be made and hopefully they come out and perform.”

While a young, smart roster allows for team-wide develop-ment, Peel said monitoring players’ progress in the offseason is difficult due to NCAA restric-tions. The only contact coaches can have with players regard-ing the sport is sending them workout programs. As a result, he said player improvement is largely based on self-motivation.

Peel said he hopes to advance further in the ASC Tournament

this season, after a 3-0 loss in the semi-finals to Mississippi College. The two teams will meet for the first time since that match on Sept. 15 in Clinton.

Other prominent matches on the schedule include a trip to Belton to take on last year’s oth-er semi-final runner-up, Mary-Hardin Baylor, on Oct. 1, and ASC Champion UT Tyler will pay the Comets a visit on Oct. 22, the third game in a stretch of four games in eight days head-ing into the ASC Champion-ship Tournament.

contract and was bound to help out for a year. Within a few seasons, he became a full-time assistant.

He worked his way up the assistant coaching chain and eventually became the team’s hitting coach, also helping out with outfield defense, pitching and teach-ing catchers game-calling strategy.

While at Cortland, Pos-ner was named to the All-Northeast Region Coaching Staff five times and oversaw his offense hit .300 or better in 11 of his 12 seasons — the team hit .299 one year. While Posner is considered a skilled, knowledgeable hit-ting coach by colleagues on all levels of NCAA softball, he emphasized that main-taining strong relationships with the players is the most important step in develop-ing a talented team.

“Our coaching recogni-tion is really the benefit of having great teams,” he said, and later added, “It’s a byproduct of having great players.”

Posner said the most im-portant lesson he learned from Lenhart while at Cor-tland is that coaching isn’t just about chalk talk and strategy, but it is about how you treat players.

“It’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Jills and the Joes,” he said, referring to one of Lenhart’s adages. “It’s saying you’re the most important person right now. What can I do for you?” he continued. “… You have to care about the big picture of the person, not just how

they can get you to win a softball game.”

Though he learned sev-eral valuable lessons and techniques while establish-ing himself as a highly de-sired assistant coach, Posner wasn’t done with his educa-tion.

He received a master’s de-gree at Cortland and is still finishing up his 150-page thesis on the intentional-ity of camp programming. Though only 60 pages in, Posner plans on finishing “as soon as possible,” he said with a chuckle. The mon-ster essay sits on a shelf in his new office, alongside a squash racket — he is new to the sport, but all the coaches at UTD play it — and a few boxes and miscel-laneous papers.

He is still acclimating himself with Dallas.

“It’s a change, but change isn’t always bad,” he said.

While Dallas is noticeably warmer than chilly New York, Posner insists he’s a warm-weather guy. He said New York rarely gets above 90 degrees and said with a laugh that 105 beats mi-nus-17 and two feet of snow.

To combat the cold weather at Cortland, the school built an $18 million indoor football complex complete with indoor bas-ketball courts, a full track, softball field and locker rooms. While UTD is far newer than the athletic programs at Cortland and the athletic program may not have millions to throw around on facilities, Posner is excited about the academ-ically focused UTD.

“You say new, I say op-portunity,” Posner said, and later added, “On the field

we’re going to give every-thing we have… But, the fact that there is an impor-tance put on academics, I’m a big fan. I like that aspect of UTD.”

While the softball pro-gram hasn’t had a winning season since 2006, win to-tals have increased each of the past two seasons.

Posner called the Ameri-can Southwest Conference the deepest, most challeng-ing conference in softball, but he is excited at the thought of flying under the radar against four teams ranked in the top 20 in 2011.

“That’s what we’re up against — not easy — may-be we’ll take the role of un-derdog this year,” he said.

Changing the mentality of the program is one of his highest priorities. He said belief and confidence are im-portant qualities, and never utters the word “slump.” Squaring off against top competition everyday re-quires a combination of skill, focus and attitude.

“I don’t care if you hit 10 home runs in a row or if you’ve struck out 10 times in a row,” he said. “When you get to your next at-bat, you can go 1-1 or you can go 0-1. Those are your two options.”

That optimistic-yet-real-istic outlook has taken Pos-ner from honorary parent to head softball coach at the NCAA level. Posner’s genu-ine passion for the game and for teaching has led him to this stage in his career, and his determination to succeed makes it seem highly likely that UTD can join the ranks of the ASC elite.

After all, he hasn’t failed yet.

POSNERcontinued from page 16

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