The 136,000 square feet, three story building will be fully finished by next August for the fall 2014 semester. The new Jamrich will house not only classrooms and lecture halls but also faculty offices for five departments — English, psychology and sociology, math and computer science, social work and anthropology —  and extensive space dedicated to “informal learning” and lounge seating areas, according to associate director of engineering and planning Jim Thams.

Thams said in spite  of the poor Upper Peninsula weather conditions in recent weeks, construction has stayed close to schedule.

“We started slow the first few weeks, but within the second and third week we were able to bring in the excavators,” Thams said. “Having those few weeks at the end of the semester enabled us to hit the ground running and we only lost three days due to weather.”

Thams said creating a facility that brings connectivity to campus was the driving force of this building, and it will be a “busy, vibrant facility” for both students and faculty. There will  also be a passageway connecting the Learning Resource Center to the new Jamrich building, according to Thams.

Thams also said it is important NMU maintains a large lecture hall for extracurricular activities such as Campus Cinema and other large campus events.

Among the departments that will be relocated to the new Jamrich is the English department. The English department offices are currently located in Gries Hall near the University Center.

Jo Doran, a professor in the English department, said the relocation of the department to the new Jamrich building would bring many benefits for students and faculty that is very important.

“Last fall I had a class downstairs here in Gries, and it was wonderful,” Doran said. “I had easier access for things students wanted during class, like if they asked, ‘do you have a book on this,’ or ‘could you make a copy of such and such,’ I could run up and do it. It was just excellent.”

She said the convenience of having classrooms and faculty offices in relative proximity will greatly benefit students in the future.

Doran also said the relocation will give professors more availability with students since they will be in the academic mall.

“We will be located where all the buildings are active,” she said. “Right now we are really separate. It takes me a long time to get over (to the academic mall).

“If I’m working with a student here (in Gries Hall) during office hours and then to run over to class, I have to break things off, whereas if I had a classroom in the same building I could spend time with them.”

The building currently has 90 percent of the footing and foundation completed. If construction goes as planned, the steel and walls will be up before the snow falls in November.

On Wednesday, April 24, NMU received the Campus Compact Engaged Campus of the Year award for its four-year track record of helping students find relevant and professional service learning opportunities.

With programs like the Academic Service Learning (ASL) courses, Student Leader Fellowship Program, the Center For Student Enrichment and over 300 student organizations on campus, NMU has proven itself to be one of the top game changers in the realm of pre-graduation service learning.

“Service learning is project-oriented learning with community partners,” said Charles Ganzert, a professor in the communications and marketing department. Ganzert also attended the award ceremony, which was held at the state capital building in Lansing.

“We think that this is something that Northern is sort of getting a reputation for doing well. It’s a place where you can not only learn the theoretical side of your field and read about it and think about it, but you can get your hands on it — you’re not just learning theoretical stuff, you’re actually doing it.”

Ganzert was one in a group of eight NMU administrators and graduate students to have recently travelled to Lansing to receive the “Engaged Campus of the Year” award from Michigan Campus Compact, which was based on Northern’s exceptional dedication to the gaining of professional experience through service learning projects. Among those attending were Paul Lang, associate provost at NMU, as well as two graduate students, Rachel Harris and the recently retired Dave Bonsall, all of the Center for Student Enrichment.

“It’s all these different aspects — it’s the international service trips, it’s academic service learning, it’s Superior Edge and the student leader fellowship program,” said graduate assistant at the Center for Student Enrichment Hannah Kratz.

“There are so many professors, individuals, faculty and staff that really care about this stuff so they’re doing whatever they can to get their students involved and engaged in the community.”

Ganzert agreed that Northern’s dedication to service learning is not a singular effort but instead a sweeping movement across campus, involving many different departments and programs.

“You can look at the Center for Student Enrichment, but you can also look to the departments on campus, and if you look at the Center (for Student Enrichment), they’re all doing a lot of really neat stuff,” Ganzert said.

According to Ganzert, service learning relies on participation from not only a student and professor, but also a partner in the community who is willing to help students gain experience. When all goes as planned, all parties involved benefit from a service learning association.

“Service learning is not just about being a volunteer — you’re connecting a course or discipline with an activity,” Ganzert said. “One of the keys to academic service learning is that it’s tied to the curriculum but everyone has a win. The students get something out of it, the professors get something out of it and the partners get something out of it.”

According to Ganzert, the fact that a majority of campus departments provide some sort of service learning medium for students is the main reason Northern has become a noteworthy university for service learning.

“A lot of people in departments across campus know that this is a way to sort of illustrate what you’re going to do after you graduate and that’s a good thing to try out,” he said. “If you’re going to be a major, you should give it a shot and if it feels good you keep doing it and if it doesn’t, well then change your major. Then you’ll get a chance to try it there too and maybe confirm where you are and what you’re doing.”

Ganzert suggested that first-year students get involved with an ASL or department service learning project during their first year as a way to test the waters of a recently declared major.

“Incoming students, they may not have a firm grip on their major yet,” he said. “(With service learning) you get a sample but you might also do something in the community to engage with other people in the community. Instead of just being away from it, being in a dorm and not really knowing what goes on around here, we’re trying to push you in the community to try something together.”

Additionally, there are a large number of student organizations on campus that can help students get a taste of different majors, interests and hobbies without being altogether committed to them.

“One of the great things about Northern is that for a relatively small school, there are a lot of opportunities,” Ganzert said. “Also, you don’t have to be a senior to qualify to take advantage of an opportunity, you can be engaged earlier on and be a part of the community, make a difference.

“Another thing that’s nice about service learning is that you effect change, you can make a change and make a difference somewhere and it makes you feel like ‘not only do I have a major but maybe I can actually be a part of a community and enjoy being a person situated with other people.’ You can build a resume instead of just saying ‘I got a degree and here’s my GPA.’”

According to an ASL fact sheet, 1,865 students participated in an Academic Service Learning Course during the 2011-12 school year, with 85 percent of them attributing community interaction as an enhancement or their learning and understanding of the subject matter of the course.

During the 2011-12 school year, Northern had designated 81 courses and 121 sections as service learning opportunities.

Director and curator for the Devos Art Museum, Melissa Matuscak was granted $4,000 from the Finlandia Foundation to clean and restore 20 paintings by Finnish artist and Upper Peninsula native, N. Cecelia Kettunen, a project that Matuscak said has been going on for five years.

Matuscak said Kettunen was raised in Ishpeming and died in 1992. Matuscak also said it’s not very often the museum receives this amount of work from a single artist.

“We’ve had [the paintings] in storage and have shown them in the museum before,” Matuscak said. “[Kettunen] stored the artwork in her cabin, but the cabin wasn’t heated in the winter and the bulk of it was created in the 1940s and 50s.”

Matuscak said the paintings may have been damaged by conditions created by a wood stove Kettunen had in her cabin.

A wood stove, Matuscak said, can create surface grime which could be a contributing factor to the condition of the paintings.

The paintings, Matuscak said, need a good cleaning and there are some cracks in the paint in some areas that need to be painted over.

“The goal with the whole project is to have a catalog published about Kettunen and create an exhibition of her work and have it travel around the Upper Peninsula and the Midwest,” Matuscak said.

“Right now we have about a dozen paintings down in Chicago but they’re going to take a year to clean.”

Matuscak said the grant is beneficial to the completion of this project as the museum has a budget to do programming, but no fund is established for work on the museums permanent collection.

“Anytime we do projects like this, it comes out of the programming fund,” Matuscak said. “That’s why we applied for the grant.”

Matuscak also said the grant is not only an honor to the museum, but to the community as a whole.

“It was a huge honor to be recognized for the importance of this artwork not only to the community, but to the Upper Peninsula as well,” she said.

Spokesman Richard Ahola of the Finlandia Foundation said Matuscak was one of 31 people that were awarded grants this year.

A second grant was awarded to Jason Bishop  in the amount of $5000 from the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. Bishop, who is an assistant professor at the Physical Education and Institutional Facility (PEIF) and coordinator of the Physical Education Teacher Education Program, is working on a project involving aerobic and muscle-strengthening among children and teens to understand how children comprehend their ability to finish tasks related to necessary motor skills.

“It started with my dissertation where I was assessing motor skills of students with ADHD and comparing their perceptions to their actual performance,” Bishop said. “I needed to identify a scale or questionnaire that had been previously validated. I found one, but I didn’t find one that matched what I needed.”

Bishop said the grant will help to create and validate a scale to assess motor skill ability. He said that every 15 years, the scales need to be re-validated and he is working on a questionnaire that will consist of 15 items.

Bishop’s questionnaire is unique in that it will be accessible through its own iPad app as opposed to being on paper.

Bishop said a normal paper questionnaire would show two pictures with children performing the same motor skill: one performing an action correctly and one performing it incorrectly.

Bishop said an example would be one picture showing a child kicking a ball into a net while the second picture would show a child kicking a ball and missing the net. Bishop also said that with the iPad app, video of the action will be shown for a visual representation as opposed to just looking at two pictures.

Bishop said he is very happy to have been awarded the grant.

“A lot of my colleagues applied for this grant and I made it to phase two,” Bishop said. “None of my colleagues have ever made it to phase two. I was just happy to make it past phase one.”

Bishop said he’s even more surprised he received the grant because he just started his position in January and some of his colleagues have been working for two or three years and have not received a grant.

Bishop said he wants to tackle the issue of obesity and the goal of his research is to try and increase physical activity for children.

Bishop will be assisted by graduate research assistant who will aid in data collection, help talk to school teachers, and perform data analysis.

ASNMU treasurer and senior computer information studies major Nathan Bradbury said the first project is to raise the campus’ landscaping appearance.

“We’re working with the grounds crew to find a designated flower bed,” Bradbury said. “You pick a spot and from there you do your own landscaping within that area.”

Bradbury said ASNMU is trying to spread its name across campus and demonstrate that it’s accomplishing things this summer.

Bradbury said other big projects ASNMU is working on are the upcoming student orientations and Fall Fest.

“Our biggest goal for the next year is ultimately our advertising,” Bradbury said. “Just getting our name out there and letting [students] know what we can do for them.”

Bradbury said ASNMU’s goal is to let students know what the organization is in place for.

“The biggest thing is to let them know we’re there so if an issue comes up, they can come to us and we can try to fight that issue for them,” Bradbury said. “[That] is ultimately the biggest reason we’re here.”

Another project the organization has been working on is the bike share program.

“I re-inventoried the bikes and got them all up-to-date,” Bradbury said. “We have about 20 of them ready to go in the fall.”

Bradbury said advertising is going to be key in informing students of the bike share program. Bradbury also said the project is the organization’s largest because it’s been ongoing for a year now.

He said students can check-out bikes from the library using their student ID. The student will have the bike free of charge for 72 hours, but if the bike is not returned within three days, there is a charge of $5 for each day the bike is kept.

Bradbury said students will be held accountable for any damages that happen to the bike.

“Any damages beyond normal wear and tear will be charged to their student account,” Bradbury said. “So instead of us having to bill them and then them throwing away the bill, they’d have to pay it before they can register [for classes] or graduate.”

The bikes were donated by NMU Public Safety, Bradbury said, so the quality isn’t top notch, but they are good to begin the program with.

Additionally, ASNMU president Amber Lopota recently attended a conference at the University of Maryland to improve her leadership skills to be applied to future ASNMU projects.

Lopota said she partially attributes her ASNMU election success to her speech for the March event, Elect Her.

Lopota said Judy Puncochar, an assistant professor in the School of Education, sent her a message shortly after the event asking Lopota if she would be interested in attending a conference focused on women in leadership roles, specifically on college campuses.

Lopota said she took a lot away from the various workshops.

“It was amazing,” Lopota said. “There were literally over 100 [workshops] to choose from.”

From learning salary negotiations to how to stop saying “sorry,” Lopota said there was a large focus on strengthening leadership and self-confidence.

“At the end of the workshop, they had keynote speakers who really emphasized that you really have to pick up your place in this world and chase your dreams,” Lopota said. “Once you’re able to do that, the number one priority should be to go out and help someone else do the same thing.”

Lopota said she realizes the word “leader” can carry a heavy meaning.

“Some people think it’s an overwhelming responsibility, which it is, but in a very positive way,” Lopota said.

“I would love to extend a hand, pull [people] in and help them get involved.”

Williams’ intended destination is Econo Foods, where he will shop for his standard two week supply of groceries, but he first must catch a bus interchange Marq-Tran’s newly built transfer station in downtown Marquette.

Although he has a working car, Williams chooses to take advantage of Marq-Tran’s zero-fare student services for a variety of reasons. According to Williams, perhaps the most important reason is how expensive gas has become in recent weeks.

According to the American Automobile Association of Michigan, gas prices in Marquette jumped 15 cents during the past month, raising the area average to $4.02 per gallon.

“I think the rational response to rising gas prices is to take public transportation,” Williams said. “I have a car, but gas prices totally affect whether or not I use it. I usually either opt for walking or for taking the bus.”

Williams said taking advantage of free public transportation is a great way to avoid “using the car as a personal wheelchair.” Williams said he thinks students, including himself, rely too much on their own vehicles when they could be carpooling or riding the bus, adding that he would like to see more cash-strapped students taking advantage of Marq-Tran’s zero-fare student transport, which allows any NMU student to ride for free.

“A lot of students don’t even know they have free access,” Williams said. “I would like to see Northern plug it more and tell students ‘Hey, you have free transportation.’ I didn’t hear it directly from Northern; I heard it through the grapevine. Maybe it’s just that I don’t pay attention, but a lot of students don’t either.”

According to stats provided by Niki Norman, principal secretary at Public Safety, ridership for both on- and off-campus bus routes over the past few years has fluctuated greatly.

According to Norman, the off-campus fixed-route ridership from August 2011 to April 2012 was 34,785, while numbers for September 2012 to April 2013 were 39,404, indicating an increase in the use of off-campus transportation. The on campus transportation indicated a different pattern, however.

“For August 2011 through April 2012, the total passengers for Marq-Tran’s on-campus routes was 50,023,” Norman said. “The on-campus statistics are not complete, but ridership from August 2012 to March 2013 has been 33,671.”

However, because the on-campus Wildcat Shuttles only transport students during the academic year (fall through spring semester), Public Safety’s statistics concerning on-campus ridership in 2013 are not yet complete.

Still, Norman said the 16,352 passenger difference could be easily explained.

“The tentative shuttle numbers for April 2013 are 7,800. They are still compiling the numbers from this week,” she wrote. “That would bring the ridership for 2012-13 to approximately 41,471.”

Norman said both inclement weather and absence of classes in observance of Martin Luther King Day could have also affected this number.

And while the off-campus ridership statistics indicate an increase in people utilizing public transportation, a 2013 study by Smart Growth America revealed that less than one percent of Marquette workers 16 and older said they commuted by public transportation between 2009 and 2011.

The overwhelming majority of workers chose to drive their own cars instead, even when Marquette saw its highest ever recorded gas price — $4.30 per gallon — in May 2011. In fact, according to the study, more workers chose to walk instead of riding the bus. Some students seem to share a similar outlook on public transportation.

“My job requires me to have a car and drive it around anyway,” said Joe Jacisin, a junior NMU student studying heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. “I’m a pizza guy, so I just use my car because it’s required for work. Plus, I feel more comfortable driving in my own car.”

As a pizza deliveryman, Jacisin said his gas is typically paid for by tip money. Although he almost never rides the bus, Jacisin did admit he would take full advantage of Marq-Tran’s services if he found himself out of work or without a car.

“This town is small enough to where public transportation works efficiently,” Jacisin said. “The buses are always running all over Marquette and it seems like it never takes very long to get from one place to another. I don’t take the bus personally, but I’m glad the option is there.”

Marq-Tran is Marquette County’s only public transportation authority. It was established in 1970 and operates daily in Marquette, Ishpeming and Negaunee, as well as in an array of other local townships.

According to Smart Growth America, Marq-Tran receives funds through the Michigan Department of Transportation from the Federal Transit Administration’s Section 5311 program, which provides funding to non-urban areas with populations fewer than 50,000. The transit authority also receives funding through a county-wide property tax, according to the same organization.

Studies conducted by AAA Michigan suggest gas prices statewide have been consistently higher than the national average for the past 12 months.

Currently, the statewide average is $4.09 per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. The current nationwide average is $3.62.

70 percent of universities report that online learning plays a critical role in their long-term strategy, according to the Babson Survey Research Group in San Francisco.

Northern Michigan University is one of the many schools across the country with rapid growth in online learning.

During the past decade, NMU has increased their number of offered courses online from 26 in the fall of 2004 to 114 in the winter of 2013, while 146 online courses are being offered this summer to meet the high demand of online learning at NMU.

Elizabeth Monske, an assistant professor of English at NMU, also trains teaching assistants in the English department in the art of online teaching.

According to Monske, when online courses were first offered at NMU in the late 1990s, they were meant as a replacement for correspondence courses, where distance learners would receive an assignment in the mail to be completed and sent back to receive a grade or for a student working full-time who wished to receive an associates or bachelor’s degree.

Monske said while NMU still has students enrolled in online classes from cities all across the nation, online courses have  grown to accommodate on-campus and Marquette-area students, as well as distance learners.

“I don’t think these courses were ever meant for the kid in pajamas,” Monske said. “However, these courses are now reaching a whole new world of learning for students and are reaching a group of students in the Marquette area, helping them further their education as well.”

Katherine Place, a sophomore criminal justice major, is one of these students living in Marquette who benefit from online courses. Place works 28 hours a week to help pay for college. With a heavy workload, Place said online learning provides her with the best opportunity to succeed in class.

“I learn a lot better when I am focusing on myself,” said Place. “When you’re reading chapters and going over notes, the sense of independence makes you learn the material on your own, which helps if you strive better through individual work.”

Students seeking online courses should have great self-discipline and the ability to produce work under strict deadlines. With nobody reminding students about assignments and quizzes, one has to be very organized and prepared to put in a good amount of work, according to Place. “You can’t slack off and push things aside, you have to take the class seriously to succeed.”

Tom Gillespie, an instruction al technologist at NMU who provides support and assistance to professors with online courses, said that changes over time such as the switch in course management from WebCT to the Moodle system known as “EduCat” has strengthened the online courses at NMU.

“Based on surveys with professors and students, we’ve been able to serve them with what we feel is the best software that accommodates their educational needs for an online class with EduCat,” Gillespie said.

EduCat’s software features allow for online courses to have open thread discussions through chatrooms, wall posts and message boards as forms of classroom discussion in ways that have been limited with previous software used at NMU, according to Gillespie.

Not everyone on campus is on board with online learning at NMU. While Robert Goodrich, an associate professor of history at NMU, has been teaching online courses for a decade, he is largely critical of online learning.

“Most higher thinking that we’re trying to get at in college is not just about memorizing facts,” Goodrich said. “Creative thinking requires heavy engagement with professors, one that tends to see smaller results in that aspect of courses online.”

Goodrich also said while some students come into an online course with expectations that a course will be easier online than in person, an online class will actually be harder if the proper amount of work is done to receive a good grade.

Goodrich said he holds his online students to the same level of expectations as his students in his classes held in person, with the same quizzes and homework assignments.

While the number of students taking online classes seems to increase each year, he adds that he cannot find a statistically meaningful difference in grades between online and on campus classes.

“It’s all with what kind of effort your students are going to put forth in the class,” Goodrich said.

While the number of online courses offered at NMU along with the number of students enrolled in these courses continue to increase, according to Monske, NMU is not an online school.

In order to have online certificates, such as an associates or bachelor’s program, the school would have to change its accreditation, which is not something NMU plans on doing any time in the near future.

“Students and parents still want face to face contact,” Monske said. “I don’t think students are going to want to go completely online at NMU. But while we have such an important tool such as the internet, it is important that we use it.”

Meghan Whitenton, who graduated with honors from NMU this May with a bachelor’s in English, was confronted with a harsh reality when she sat down for exit counseling in the spring.

“It was a moment of grave realization, of exactly what the future looks like with that amount of debt,” Whitenton said.

She is certainly not alone.

Student debt has exceeded $1 trillion dollars nationwide, according to a report by americanprogress.org, eclipsing credit card and auto loans. It is the only form of consumer debt that has continued to grow since the financial collapse of 2008, putting the average debt for the class of 2010 at about $25,000, which is 5 percent more than in 2009 according to the nonprofit research group Institute for College Access and Success.

“Student debt is this sacred cow,” said NMU economics professor Tawni Ferrarini. “[People think] it’s okay to accumulate it, but don’t think about how they’re going to pay it back in the future.”

Whitenton, who has worked part- or full-time her entire academic career, is a Ronald McNair Scholar and graduated with her associate’s debt-free and with honors from Oakland University. She is part of Phi Theta Kappa and Honor’s Society, as well as the first person in her family to graduate with a degree.

“Despite working, I’m still unable to afford tuition, books or to be able to support myself without loans,” she said. “I know that I need to take personal responsibility for borrowing that money, but looking back, I feel resentful because the American education system tries to create this notion or illusion that when you’re done with school…you’ll have all these opportunities.”

In 2010, the unemployment rate for young college graduates was 9.1 percent, the highest annual rate on record, according to The Institute for College Access and Success.

“When [students] take on debt today, that means they’re going to be able to consume, save, invest and give to others less in the future,” Ferrarini said. “So it’s a tradeoff.”

Based on data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study conducted by the Department of Education, the average debt levels for graduating seniors with loans rose almost 82 percent from 1996 to 2008, a bubble expected to have adverse effects on the broader economy.

Bridget Podner, a fifth-year transfer student, said she has also worked throughout school to keep her debt low.

“It’s definitely worrisome,” she said, adding that students need to be counseled about the long-term burden of debt before accepting the overage checks often available at NMU through financial aid.

But not all loans are created equal, and it is important for students to know exactly what their options are in order to accumulate the least amount of debt.

According to Consumer Reports, taking out more than your first year’s projected salary means planning on longer than 10 years for repayment.  If students find they can’t afford to pay, there are applications for deferment or forbearance, and they should contact their lender immediately to avoid late fees and defaulting, which will hurt their credit score.

Families should be wary of private loans, which have variable interest rates and are nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, according to the nonprofit Project on Student Debt. They point out that private loans are not eligible for deferment, income-based repayment or loan forgiveness, like federal loans are, and the percentage of graduates with private loans increased from 5 percent in 2003-04 to 14 percent in 2007-08.

There is reason for optimism though. According to the 2010-11 Michigan State University Recruiting Trends study, hiring is expected to increase by 3 percent, with hiring of college graduates expected to increase by nearly 10 percent by next year.

“What we have to do in this era is identify a niche, a specialization, or some type of comparative advantage that helps us stand out from the people around us with the same college degree,” Ferrarini said.

“It boils down to individual choices,” she said. “Be informed. Make strategic decisions. Don’t just follow the herd because everyone else is doing it.”

Before picking the classes students are going to take each semester, many would like to know which teachers are going to be the best match for the way in which they learn.

Although students are surveyed in class, only NMU faculty and staff can view the results of these surveys.

Students have resorted to another option — the website ratemyprofessor.com, which offers students the ability not only to rate their professors but see the overall ratings of each professor at their university.

Students can choose to utilize the information on ratemyprofessor.com to pick classes based on a professor’s overall ratings and reputation among past students.

“I use ratemyprofessor.com every semester,” senior biology major Katie Meyers said. “I like to see how different teachers are rated so I can pick which one I want to take.”

Meyers and many other students utilize the website ratemyprofessor.com to choose between different professors when they have an option.  The NMU faculty, however, have a negative take on the website.

“Ratemyprofessor.com shouldn’t be used reliably to pick a teacher because there are two types of students who respond: those who hate the professors and those who love them,” said Ray Ventre, NMU’s English department head. “They give them a good or bad review, without actually analyzing their teaching ability.”

While some think the results taken from ratemyprofessor.com shouldn’t be considered valid, others disagree.

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) published its findings for the top colleges in the United States in Forbes magazine, using ratemyprofessor.com to account for 25 percent of their decision.

According to the CCAP, the “participation of students in this website has been overwhelming, and it has been estimated that 7,000,000 evaluations were considered in the formulation of the rankings included in this ranking.”

As observed in a peer reviewed electronic journal titled “Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation,  “Forbes Magazine argued that their evaluation system should be taken more seriously compared to others because their system focused less on reputation and money spent and more on concerns directly facing students, such as whether courses would be interesting and rewarding.”

Although ratemyprofessor.com is used by millions of students all over the country, members of NMU’s faculty feel the website isn’t reliable.

“The thing about ratemyprofessor.com is that it is a self-selecting group of students that use the site, so people who do rate professors, do so on their own, and who knows their motivation for doing it,” said NMU English graduate teaching assistant Erkki Mackey.

Meyers admits harsh feelings were her motivation for one such rating. “One time I gave a teacher who gave me a bad grade a really bad rating on ratemyprofessor.com,” Meyers said. “I think he deserved it.”

Although it appears that people may put undeserved trust in ratemyprofessor.com, Ventre said the teacher evaluations at NMU are taken very seriously, even by the students who fill them out.

As the English department head, Ventre said he goes over all of the teacher evaluations and the results of the survey are mainly used to aid the teachers in fixing any problems they have in the classroom, but they can also have an effect on a teacher’s job.

“One of the things that distinguishes the teacher evaluations from ratemyprofessor.com is that the evaluations ask more in depth questions,” Mackey said. “They allow for analysis to be made to provide a consensus view.”

The results of the evaluations, however, could not be given to the students in a form like ratemyprofessor.com, according to Ventre.

“The student evaluations are confidential. It could create problems if the students were able to view them,” Ventre said. “They are used to generate an analysis of teachers over numerous years.  The results of the evaluations couldn’t be given to the students because it is too short-term.”

Instead of using the teacher evaluations or ratemyprofessor.com, Ventre said he has seen a different option in his past education experience.

“When I was an undergraduate, I was part of an organization that created a survey that evaluated the teachers and then provided the results to the students,” Ventre said.  “If a group like ASNMU created a survey and provided the results to the students it would be more valuable than ratemyprofessor.com if they asked the right questions.

“They should ask questions that provide the students with a feel of the nature of the courses that the professor teaches.”

Which courses to survey should also be considered, Ventre said, because it would be useless to give or receive student ratings on a professor who they have to take a course.

Besides ratemyprofessor.com or other forms of surveys, students currently have another resource they can utilize while picking teachers.

Students are able to request the grade distribution for any teacher’s class at NMU, Ventre said.

In doing so, students can see how many good grades the teachers give out in each class compared to bad grades.

If students want to find out which teacher to take next semester, ratemyprofessor.com is a possibility, but requesting a professor’s grade distribution for said class might be a more suitable alternative, according to Ventre.

As incoming students attend orientation over the next few weeks will soon learn, the situation at every organization fair becomes equally overwhelming — when faced with hundreds of booths for organizations, volunteer opportunities or a menagerie of other seemingly wonderful commitments, many incoming freshmen will naturally sign up for every email list they can get their overanxious hands on.

Whether by obligation under the gaze of an overenthusiastic booth-tender or by actual interest in what the organization has to offer, incoming students end up with a bag full of business cards, brochures, pamphlets and random sheets of paper with interest meeting dates, phone numbers or names on them.

Like clockwork, this is fine and good until fall semester comes around, when inboxes begin to overflow with emails from clubs students don’t remember signing up for or are slowly realizing they don’t actually have time for.

Yet, instead of unsubscribing from these emails, the staff at the North Wind challenges incoming students to respond to them, get curious and follow through with the organizations that seem exciting. Attend the interest meetings.

Go to the weekly gatherings. Participate in an event put on by one of these organizations this fall.

Not only will it provide an opportunity to meet members of the NMU community, but it will help to shape the college experience into one based on active participation, not on simply sitting in a classroom and listening to a professor speak hypothetically about the world.

Become established as a participant early on, and it will more likely persist throughout college.

So, intrepid freshmen and transfer students, sign away. Get excited about the opportunities that Northern has to offer — they are certainly worth getting excited about. Go ahead and sign up for the Sailing Club even if you’ve never sailed or the College Libertarian club despite the fact that you may not know exactly what Libertarianism entails.

But when the time comes to begin attending meetings, do it. The active engagement of incoming and current students will continue to benefit the NMU and Marquette community with ideas and participation.

In a lot of different ways, organizations and leagues of different types of professional sports have conducted drug screening tests at many points within an athlete’s career, screening new athletes as they are recruited while testing veterans, on and off the field, to see if they have used any performance-enhancing drugs (PED) throughout their veritable careers.

Recently, however, one such sport has uncovered a flaw that has been dubbed the greatest drug-testing controversy in the history of the sport. Earlier this year, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced it is set to suspend around 20 different players due to the possible usage of PEDs.

After years of hearing about similar news coming from MLB, how can so many athletes suddenly be discovered to be using drugs from such an allegedly-prestigious and PED-aware organization?

One would think that after incidents pertaining to celebrity-athletes such as Barry Bonds in 2003 and Jose Cansaco in 2005, professional baseball organizers would have figured out a way to pick out steroids and other PEDs among athletes who are either doing extraordinarily well in sports or, putting it frankly, physically becoming better at sports while doing less than those who are practicing.

According to CNN, baseball’s highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, and fellow well-known player Ryan Braun are among those listed as possible suspensions.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a major fan of these players and am not necessarily throwing them completely under the bus. While it is always disappointing for me to hear about someone in a professional field moving against the law to supposedly get better at what they do, most of these players did ascend to where they are now prior to the allegations against them, whether they are true or not. I believe a lot of the fault this time around goes to a particular pharmaceutical company that managed to fly under the radar for quite a while.

Also according to CNN, a “now-closed Miami anti-aging clinic” called “Biogenesis” that was under the direction by Anthony Bosch originated the scandal when they provided the drugs to Rodriguez and Braun.

Bosch was interviewed then by ESPN, to whom he said he would cooperate with the original investigation and he would speak with the investigators looking into the case.

Meanwhile, the managers of both the Brewers and the Yankees said as little as possible to the media. The only words expressed by both managers were basically “the MLB is handling it” and “we worry about our players.” Both managers claimed to know nothing of the scandal.

What frightens fans like me is the fact that, as often as occurrences like these happen over the historical timeline of professional baseball, managers do not seem to have a clue that it is happening even when large clinical or pharmaceutical companies have direct hands in the doping scandals.

I feel like, with the past incidents having occurred, this potentially-MLB-damaging incident involving so many players should have been clearly imminent.

One of the Yankees’ outfielders, Vernon Wells, was quoted by CNN about methods the league has been implementing to avoid such a problem.

“We’ve done so much as a group to try to rid ourselves of incidents like this,” Wells said. “In spite of advances in drug testing, new doping techniques designed to avoid detection keep coming.”

With that knowledge, I feel that the league should be working twice as fast as the new doping techniques in order to stay their advance.

I want to be able to watch baseball, or any sport for that matter, without thinking that my favorite athletes aren’t pumping drugs into their systems to maintain their reputations on the playing field.

Is that so much to ask of the MLB?