HOUSING SELECTION

Students prepare to register

For the first year, housing sign-ups entirely online

By Knottia Carrigan

As room selection for the 2008-2009 academic year grows closer many students are trying to decide where they want to live. Online room selection will take place from Tuesday, April 22 to Friday, May 2.

Students will be able to select an apartment or room as well as a roommate(s) for the academic year. Victor Culatta, the Director of Housing and Residential Life and Trisha Reopell, the Systems Manager, are confident students will be satisfied with room selection this year.

“It’s easier, less time consuming, and students can do it right from their bedroom,” said Reopell. However, students will notice a few new things when it comes to room selection.

First, there will be “theme based housing.” What this means is that Housing will offer the opportunity to live in different communities committed to certain themes or lifestyles.

The first theme will be 12 month housing. Students will be allowed to secure or lease a room for a 12 month period.

Quiet housing will be another theme. Residents who choose to live in areas designated as quite housing will maintain a quiet living atmosphere 24 hours a day.

There will also be areas that will cater to the needs of graduate students. This area will be exclusively for them.

In substance aware housing student will have the option to live in a substance (alcohol and elicit drug) aware environment.

Another change regarding room selection this year will be that commuters will be allowed to take part in the on-line process.

This year, students will fill out and sign their housing contracts on-line, unlike the past when they had to do this in person.

For students who need assistance with the room selection process, there will be tutorials provided both in person and over the Internet. There will be a web cast, and many students will be able to access it at the same time.

In terms of 21-plus housing, there will not be specific areas designated, as they were in the past. The Woodland Apartments and Cedar Dell South and Cedar Dell West (which will reopen this fall) will have a suite-by-suite 21-plus designation. Every person living in the suite or apartment will have to be 21 years of age for the entire suite or apartment to be designated as 21-plus. If one student in the apartment is under the age of 21, the entire suite or apartment will be considered under-21.

There will be a $200 non-refundable housing deposit required of anyone who wishes to live on campus next fall. It is very important that students make sure they bring their deposits in on time (Friday, March 14), and they must have a zero balance on their account to participate in room selection.

When students bring in their deposits, they will be asked questions about their room preferences by their RAs. Students’ names will then be entered into their records as being eligible to sign up for a room.

There have not been complaints from students before, except from the ones who weren’t “proactive,” according to OHRL staff members. They did not attempt to educate themselves, nor did they go to a tutorial. Students’ feelings toward the room selection process depend on the students. If they want their room selection process to be stress-free, they should simply follow the instructions.

“Most important, students should remember to get their deposit in on time,” said Culatta when asked if there was anything he wanted to say to students.

If there are further questions, feel free to contact the Office of Housing and Residential Life at housing@umassd.edu.

Improved meal plans increase snack options

By Stephanie Luz

Have you exhausted your snack money? The new meal plans for the upcoming 2008-2009 academic year will provide different options, flexibility, and “more bang for your buck” UMass Dartmouth students, according to Derek Costa, Assistant Director of Campus Services.

There will be four meal options available instead of the eight that are currently offered. The 19, 14, and 10 meal plans will be available to students living in the traditional resident halls — Chestnut, Elmwood, Maple Ridge, and Roberts — and the two sophomore buildings —Oak Glen and Pine Dale. These meals will cost the same and offer the same amount of meals as the current 19, 14, and 10 meal plans, however, $30 worth of Corsair Cash — snack money with school spirit — will be added to them.

“We really didn’t have a meal plan that reflected students who live in apartment-style living so that was one issue. The other issue was that students felt they wanted more flexibility, and for them flexibility meant being able to, instead of going to the Resident Dining Hall, have more choices at our retail outlets” said Jeffrey Augustine, Director of Campus Services.

Augustine hopes that the Apartment-Living Five meal plan will accommodate residents of the apartments (Aspen, Birch, Evergreen, Hickory, Ivy, and Willow) and Cedar Dell. Similar to the other meal plans, the price of this plan will cost no more than this year’s five-meal plan.

The Apartment-Living meal plan offers two major changes: an additional $200 of Corsair Cash and the ability to use the five weekly meals at the Birch grill. In other words, a student with this meal plan not only have the option to use meals at the Residential Dining Hall and Café a la Cart, but they will also be able to use a meal at Grill 155 to get a sandwich, a bag of chips and a beverage. This is just one option the meal plan offers at the Birch Grill. Other meal options include Stack’s sandwiches and Smart Market salads.

Residence Halls Council (RHC) President, Nick Prizio commented on the proposed plan, he said, “I think offering a meal plan for apartment style living is very worth while. The adaptions campus services has made with the change of living at UMD is great. If I was not graduating I would have got a meal plan.”

Campus Services, Sodexho and the RHC Food Service Committee have worked together to devise new meal plans using information from dining surveys, meetings and analyzing information from other university meal plans. There were 1,177 students who replied to the surveys that were emailed out to students. Students can find the details of each meal plan on April 22 during online room selection.

As for Commuters and other off-campus students seeking a meal plan, the declining balance plan will still be offered.

Trying to resurrect the Study in Portugal Summer Program

By Katie Bresnahan

This summer, there is hope that the UMass Dartmouth Political Science Department, the Office of International and Exchange Study Programs and the Instituto Superior e Economia e Gestã, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (ISEG-UTL) will once again enable UMD students to travel to Lisbon, Portugal, for the month of June.

The Study in Portugal Summer Program ran every year from 2000 to 2005. “The students just rave about the program, they really love it,” said Michael Baum of the Political Science Department, who runs the program.

However, the program could not run during the summers of 2006 and 2007 because not enough students signed up. Baum said that there was a big drop in enrollment following September 11, 2001. An even bigger drop occurred when the Euro started picking up ground. Baum said, “When we started the program one Euro was $0.86, now it’s $1.52.” He also said that with inflation many students decide that they need the summer to work and make money rather than spending it.

In the past, Baum said that half the students who participated in the Portugal program came from UMD and half came from other institutions. He mentioned that there were students from California, Florida, Texas, Canada and other areas who traveled to Portugal through this program. This year all students in the program will come from UMass Dartmouth.

When it comes to considering studying in Portugal, Baum tells students to think long-term. It will look excellent on their resumes. They can apply their financial aid to this program. He also says that students can stay in Lisbon for another month on their own and take a Portuguese language course or participate in an internship, thus earning nine to twelve credits instead of just the six credits for the month of June. Technically, if they did this and took an extra class at some point they can graduate a semester early, saving a a semester’s worth of money.

There are currently eight students who plan to go to Lisbon this summer. According to Susan Atkins, for the program to run they need “minimally 10 [students], but I think we’d like to see 15.”

A frequent misconception about the this program is not for everyone. Any student who is in good academic standing (an overall GPA of 2.0 or above) and completes the application process by the deadline (Friday, March 14, 2008) can participate. It is open to both graduate and undergraduate students and there is no previous Portuguese language experience required. “We’ve had nursing majors go, we’ve had fine arts people go. The typical student is probably in the social sciences… But really anybody can go,” said Baum.

While the students are in Portugal they take two political science classes through the program. In the past the courses have been offered at the 300 level and at the graduate level. This year they will also be taught at the 200 level for students who do not need 300 level political science credits. All students will attend the same two classes, but the work for the class will vary depending on the level for which a student is enrolled.

The classes that students take are entitled The Politics of International Economic Integration and The Politics of European Integration. Baum teaches the former and Professor Antonio Couch Soares of ISEG teaches the later. Each is course worth three credits and meets three times per week for a few hours.

Both classes are taught in English. “We decided right away that if we tried to do this in Portuguese or required a certain level of Portuguese that we’d have a really small market of people who’d be available,” said Baum.

Baum says that his course has a format similar to any typical course. It has a midterm, a final, a couple quizes and a paper.

When students are not in class they go on different excursions around Portugal. They travel to farms, other universities, areas in and around Lisbon and areas away from Lisbon. Some of the fieldtrips last overnight. Some of the trips also include guest lectues that are somehow related to the courses. Baum describes the experience as “combining tourism with classroom learning.”

The students are housed in a hotel in downtown Lisbon, about a 15 to 20 minute bus ride away from ISEG. Baum said that Lisbon look a lot like San Francisco. “Lisbon has tremendous night life… It has kind of a Southern California-type climate. The beaches are fantastic. They’re probably the best beaches in all of Europe and they’re about 20 minutes from downtown Lisbon,” he said.

Atkins mentioned that the Office of International and Exchange Study Programs is trying to set up an exchange program with ISEG. So UMass Dartmouth might be seeing more students from Portugal in the future. “In our region we have so many students with Portuguese decent that we’d really like to see students go back and reconnect with their culture,” she said.

The deadline to sign up for the 2008 Study in Portugal Summer Program is Friday, March 14. To apply or to get more information contact Professor Michael Baum (mbaum@umassd.edu) or Susan Atkins (satkins@umassd.edu) of the Office of International and Exchange Programs.