Unlike 2007, Southwest Florida won’t be celebrating the 10th anniversary of its state university or the grand opening of a Catholic university’s new campus.
The landscape of local higher education, however, won’t be stagnant in 2008. The region’s five colleges will feature an abundance of academic and operational changes, and construction crews will be as common as cram sessions at three schools next year.
Here’s what is on tap at each area college:
Ave Maria University
The paint has barely dried at Ave Maria’s new campus in eastern Collier County, but university leaders announced in January that a fourth dormitory is needed to handle a projected enrollment surge. That project will be completed for the fall 2008 semester, and a recreational pool and cabana complex also will be ready about the same time.
Academically, Ave Maria cannot make any substantial program changes until it completes an accreditation process with the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities. Athletics will make a push onto campus, though, as the Gyrenes expect to field teams that will compete in National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.
Edison College
Edison will offer two more bachelor’s degrees in the fall 2008, accepting students for secondary education in math and biology. The college already has a bachelor’s in public safety management. “Edison Online” also will debut in the fall, allowing students to complete an associate’s of arts degree without ever setting foot on campus.
Presidents of Edison’s Charlotte, Lee and Collier county campuses will start to operate more autonomously, essentially making decisions as if their campus is its own college.
Next fall, the Lee campus will break ground on a 50,000-square-foot nursing annex and reopen the library after a $6 million renovation project.
Florida Gulf Coast University
His honeymoon is over, and new President Wilson Bradshaw will have to get going on how he wants to shape the university’s second decade.
In the fall semester, FGCU will welcome its first doctoral-level students, offering physical therapy and education specialist degrees.
The construction frenzy will be at full steam in 2008 at the San Carlos Park school. A soccer stadium and parking garage will be ready next month. Another housing complex, resort and hospitality building and business hall will be finished in August. The state-of-the-art engineering complex will be completed by December, towering over the entrance to campus.
Hodges University
Already with campuses in Lee and Collier counties, Hodges will set up shop in Immokalee with an associate’s degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor’s degree in management in Key West. That’s in addition to a distance education program that continually is adding more online courses, and a new bachelor’s in health administration for Charlotte County students.
Hodges will solidify plans for a Hispanic Institute to assist current and future students, as well as research education issues important to the area’s Hispanic community.
With $1.3 million already in the coffer, Hodges will continue raising scholarship money for its American Military Veterans Education Fund.
Southwest Florida College
Programs, programs and more programs.
The college is expanding its offerings from two to five bachelor’s degrees, creating tracks in elementary education, early childhood education and interior design. It also will add certificate programs for emergency medical technicians and paramedics.
The Fort Myers college already has a branch in Tampa, but is eyeing leased space in Estero, Lehigh Acres and Cape Coral. An agreement could be finalized in January, cutting down travel time for students.
The Tampa campus is piloting a bachelor’s in emergency medical services, a program that could make its way to Southwest Florida in 2008.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071229/NEWS0104/71228074/1075
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Environmental Group Features Colleges Going Green
Colleges and universities across the U.S. are going green. The Sierra Club, the nation's oldest and largest environmental group, has been following the trend, and in the current issue of its magazine, Sierra, it lists the ten schools doing the most to conserve energy and implement environmentally-friendly practices. Topping the list is a private liberal arts school in a small town in rural Ohio. Karen Schaefer visited Oberlin College, where students are doing everything from buying local foods for college dining halls to staging competitions between dorms to reduce energy.
Amanda Medris, a junior at Ohio's Oberlin College, says students can get very competitive over energy. "You know, how much shower time can I have in one week and how can I beat your shower time?" She and fellow junior Lucas Brown live with six other students in a century-old house that's owned by the college.
Amanda is into creative writing and Lucas is studying economics. Both are interested in learning to live in a more environmentally-friendly way. Amanda says it starts with small changes, like using a shower timer to save water. Lucas says they've also installed a device that allows them to shut the water off in the middle of a shower when they don't need it running. "We were doing military showers where you lather up with the water off," he explains, "but the water would get really cold when you turned it off. And this keeps a very tiny flow going to keep the heat."
Lucas and Amanda have also installed a flow restrictor in the bathroom sink and are planning to put some bricks in the toilet tank to reduce the amount of water needed for flushing. Those low-tech approaches should reduce energy use in their old house.
Across campus is a newer building that was designed with energy efficiency in mind. In one corner of the lofty, sunlit atrium of the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, water plays over rocks collected from the local landscape. But what looks like a water sculpture is actually a solar monitor. Oberlin College Environmental Studies Chairman John Peterson says it's powered by a solar panel that tracks the sun from dawn to dusk and makes passersby aware of how much energy is available. "If there are clouds in the sky, each time a cloud goes by, you get this modulation in sound, where the water sort of moves down to a trickle and then comes up again. If you're here on a cloudy day the flow's much less and at night there's no flow."
Solar panels cover the roof of the Lewis Center and a newly-erected canopy over an adjacent parking lot. Peterson says they'll provide more energy than the building uses and feed the excess back into the state's energy grid. The building is heated with geothermal power and an on-site wastewater treatment system uses plants like orchids as filters.
Peterson says in addition to being eco-friendly, the building helps people become more aware of the environmental impact of their actions. Standing in front of a data-monitoring screen that shows how much energy the building is producing, how much it's using and where the energy is going, he compares it to the real-time fuel efficiency screen in a popular Toyota car. "A lot of people when they come here, they say, 'Oh, this is a little like that gauge on my Prius car that's telling me how many miles per gallon I'm getting' and that's exactly right," he says. "Anyone who's driven a Prius knows that you begin to change your driving habits. When you can instantly see how much fuel you're using, you sort of get into this game. When you begin to have this new feedback that we're trying to provide people with, you begin to behave differently."
Peterson and his students have expanded the real-time monitoring of energy use to 17 campus dormitories. Last year they sponsored a friendly competition to see which dorm could use the least power. Peterson says two dorms cut their energy use in half.
That enthusiasm doesn't surprise Jennifer Hattam, associate senior editor for Sierra Magazine. She says it's today's students who will have to deal with global challenges like oil depletion and climate change, so greening the nation's colleges and universities can really make a difference. "If you can get students, young people, thinking about these issues at a young age, then it's something they will take with them as they go into their workplaces, they can use some of these ideas that they've worked out in college in their jobs, in their own homes in the future."
This is the first time Sierra Magazine has done a green college survey, but Hattam says it won't be the last. Along with Oberlin College, larger schools like Harvard, Duke and Carnegie Mellon also made the top ten list.
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2007-12-28-voa23.cfm
Amanda Medris, a junior at Ohio's Oberlin College, says students can get very competitive over energy. "You know, how much shower time can I have in one week and how can I beat your shower time?" She and fellow junior Lucas Brown live with six other students in a century-old house that's owned by the college.
Amanda is into creative writing and Lucas is studying economics. Both are interested in learning to live in a more environmentally-friendly way. Amanda says it starts with small changes, like using a shower timer to save water. Lucas says they've also installed a device that allows them to shut the water off in the middle of a shower when they don't need it running. "We were doing military showers where you lather up with the water off," he explains, "but the water would get really cold when you turned it off. And this keeps a very tiny flow going to keep the heat."
Lucas and Amanda have also installed a flow restrictor in the bathroom sink and are planning to put some bricks in the toilet tank to reduce the amount of water needed for flushing. Those low-tech approaches should reduce energy use in their old house.
Across campus is a newer building that was designed with energy efficiency in mind. In one corner of the lofty, sunlit atrium of the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, water plays over rocks collected from the local landscape. But what looks like a water sculpture is actually a solar monitor. Oberlin College Environmental Studies Chairman John Peterson says it's powered by a solar panel that tracks the sun from dawn to dusk and makes passersby aware of how much energy is available. "If there are clouds in the sky, each time a cloud goes by, you get this modulation in sound, where the water sort of moves down to a trickle and then comes up again. If you're here on a cloudy day the flow's much less and at night there's no flow."
Solar panels cover the roof of the Lewis Center and a newly-erected canopy over an adjacent parking lot. Peterson says they'll provide more energy than the building uses and feed the excess back into the state's energy grid. The building is heated with geothermal power and an on-site wastewater treatment system uses plants like orchids as filters.
Peterson says in addition to being eco-friendly, the building helps people become more aware of the environmental impact of their actions. Standing in front of a data-monitoring screen that shows how much energy the building is producing, how much it's using and where the energy is going, he compares it to the real-time fuel efficiency screen in a popular Toyota car. "A lot of people when they come here, they say, 'Oh, this is a little like that gauge on my Prius car that's telling me how many miles per gallon I'm getting' and that's exactly right," he says. "Anyone who's driven a Prius knows that you begin to change your driving habits. When you can instantly see how much fuel you're using, you sort of get into this game. When you begin to have this new feedback that we're trying to provide people with, you begin to behave differently."
Peterson and his students have expanded the real-time monitoring of energy use to 17 campus dormitories. Last year they sponsored a friendly competition to see which dorm could use the least power. Peterson says two dorms cut their energy use in half.
That enthusiasm doesn't surprise Jennifer Hattam, associate senior editor for Sierra Magazine. She says it's today's students who will have to deal with global challenges like oil depletion and climate change, so greening the nation's colleges and universities can really make a difference. "If you can get students, young people, thinking about these issues at a young age, then it's something they will take with them as they go into their workplaces, they can use some of these ideas that they've worked out in college in their jobs, in their own homes in the future."
This is the first time Sierra Magazine has done a green college survey, but Hattam says it won't be the last. Along with Oberlin College, larger schools like Harvard, Duke and Carnegie Mellon also made the top ten list.
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2007-12-28-voa23.cfm
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