If a forthcoming recommendation is approved by the MSU Board of Trustees, MSU will not increase the merit-based pay rates that come from its general merit pools. The recommendation to limit the raises already has been unanimously approved by Academic Governance.
By now you’ve probably heard about the recent militia plot to kill police officers. According to federal investigators, a militia based out of Adrian, Mich., hoped to incite a larger uprising through violent confrontation with federal forces.
Despite the obvious detriments, the decision to cut benefits is better than many other options, such as directly reducing the number and quality of MSU faculty. Hopefully, cutting these benefits doesn’t do just that.
The Council of Graduate Students, or COGS, is working on fellowship criteria to add to the monetary pot available to graduate and professional students. An initial endowment would be $125,000, which COGS has accumulated in the past five to 10 years from budget surpluses.
Luke Fochtman celebrated his third Christmas in the hospital. Annabelle Kong spent her senior year attending 8 a.m. classes after 5 a.m. wake-up calls for medication and 7 a.m. radiation treatments. Kelly Montgomery balanced cancer treatments with graduate school applications and student organizations.
The article “MSU salaries increase above average rates”:http://statenews.com/index.php/search/?submit.x=0&submit.y=0&q=salaries (SN 4/13) does not tell the whole story of faculty compensation at MSU. According to salary figures published by the Association of American University Presses, full professors at MSU earned an average of $125,000, second only to the University of Michigan among the 29 public and private institutions listed for the state of Michigan in the survey. Associate professors at MSU earned an average of $87,300 — third in the state, behind Cooley Law School and U-M.
One of the essential duties of a journalist is to expose the truth. Simply parroting what administrators or faculty say is not enough, especially when the words themselves are inane. Case in point: “Merit-based raises could be limited for 2010-11” (SN 4/14) includes the recently minted administrative doublespeak “ … zero percent increase …” promulgated by some fool in the employ of MSU.
You probably have many anxiety-ridden questions circling in your mind if you’re a graduating senior. Where am I going? How will I get there? Am I seriously graduating from college already?
Some students might question this move to increase the budget of any university department when program cuts are being made and tuition is on the rise, but with careful consideration of many contributing factors, they should be relieved of any worry.
I do think the U.S. and Russia should have a small but substantial stockpile to keep each other and the world in check, but more than 3,000 each is a tad overkill. But I suppose this isn’t Hollywood, and Superman can’t just toss all the nuclear missiles into the sun all at once.
Transparency with the public about what could happen and being up front with the numbers involved with projects also would be preferred. The city has a plan in place and should provide residents with regular reports on how it is doing in paying back the debt from the bonds.
The open nature of the Internet has allowed it to become the most important development in collective human knowledge since the invention of the printing press. The Internet has changed how we consume content and allowed ideas to spread much faster than any point earlier in human history. A ruling by a federal appeals court significantly could change the way in which the Internet works in the future.
The T.B. Simon Power Plant burns 250,000 tons of coal each year, providing heat and electricity to the university. However, the plant produces harmful greenhouse gases — much to the dismay of many on-campus student groups and other local environmentalists. There has been a flurry of protests and campaigns to raise awareness of this fact and convince the university to switch to alternative, less harmful energy sources.
Do you fill out the SIRS forms to evaluate professors and classes?
As a journalism major living in Michigan, I know how difficult it can be in today’s economy to find not only a job, but also a suitable internship beforehand — especially an internship that doesn’t involve just going on coffee runs for the staff or taking out the trash in exchange for college credit.
Students pay for an education. They do not pay to evaluate professors. A new pilot program will require students to respond to a survey or wait a week before receiving their grades.
Race to the Top is a contest for money based on which states can best formulate a plan to conform to the federal government’s wishes. But the federal government doesn’t necessarily know what’s best for children’s education, and asking states to change in exchange for money rather than for what might be in the best interest of students is not right.
A few universities are now outsourcing grading in a shallow attempt to provide a supposedly more thorough evaluation for students. Recently, the University of Houston has fallen into this educational debacle. With a lack of TAs in classrooms, the institution has resorted to e-mailing students’ homework to India, where their work is graded by a team of professional reviewers, educated to give a sophisticated analysis of a paper.
Beginning May 1, Michigan will become the 38th state to ban smoking from all workplaces, restaurants and bars. Exceptions include gambling floors of casinos, cigar bars, tobacco specialty stores, home offices and motor vehicles. This bill is a milestone in recognizing the importance of minimizing exposure to secondhand smoke for everyone.
I love this school, and I consider it my new home. And it’s for that reason I feel a responsibility to pressure the university to make the choices that it needs to make in order to make this campus healthier and stronger in the future.