Indiana Daily Student

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU is teaming up with state agencies to improve health for all. The IU School of Public Health announced the launch of the “Public Health & You” initiative, a new program aimed at enhancing the knowledge and skills of Indiana’s front-line public health workers.Michael Reece, professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies in the School of Public Health, said the goal of the program is to provide training that helps those in public health build their skills, grow the capacity of their organizations and help improve public health in Indiana.“We have been working on the initiative for a while, and the name ‘Public Health & You’ is particularly important to us, because this initiative is open to anyone anywhere who is working to improve health of Indiana’s communities but might not think of themselves as a traditional public health worker,” Reece said.Designed in collaboration with the Indiana State Department of Health, IU Health Bloomington Hospital and the Indiana Public Health Association, the program offers free online classes aimed at professionals and practitioners whose work affects the health of the public.“We will use the ‘Public Health & You’ courses to increase awareness of the important role public health professionals play,” Carol Weiss-Kennedy, community health director for IU Health Bloomington Hospital, said in a press release.She said she has worked closely with the school on the development of the initiative, and she hopes to encourage individuals to explore this area of study.“The School of Public Health - Bloomington is committed in working collaboratively with the state public health infrastructure and workforce development,” said Mohammad Torabi, founding dean and chancellor’s professor at the School of Public Health.Five courses are available on the website, but Torabi said the program will continue to grow.The course topics include an introduction to public health, environmental health, epidemiology and biostatistics, public health administration and behavioral, social and community health.Reece said the program reflects how public health is conducted in different ways.“The courses and certificates available at ‘Public Heath & You’ are developed in response to professional needs of the Indiana health work force,” said Priscilla Barnes, faculty member in the School of Public Health.Completion of the five courses will result in the earning of a Professional Development Certificate in Public Health for the IU School of Public Health.Though the program is not designed for IU students, Reece said students are encouraged to enroll if they want to improve their knowledge or skills about public health. He said it is also a good introduction if students are curious about what public health might mean for them.According to the American Public Health Association, Indiana is one of the 10 least healthy states in America, and public health funding is less than half of the national average.Reece said with “Public Health & You,” the School of Public Health hopes to improve the health of local communities.“A healthier Indiana means improved economic stability and enhanced quality of life for all Hoosiers,” Torabi said.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/06/school-of-public-health-creates-free-public-health-courses

Regional Festival features local music, food

(06/01/14 10:31pm)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Fans catching the action at the NCAA Baseball Regional at Bart Kaufman Field last weekend could also take part in a bonus event sponsored by the IU Athletics Department.The Jordan Avenue Festival took place just outside the baseball field, and it aimed to keep fans entertained before, after and between games. Jake Dodds and the Stagecoach Revolver and the All Access Band provided live music, and food was available from Great White Smoke BBQ, Papa John’s and Kids Kettle Korn. Tents and tables kept festival-goers out of the heat.“It’s nice to come out and sit in the shade after sitting on the hot aluminum seats during the game,” Bloomington resident and IU graduate Tim Riffle said.Riffle and his wife, Sarah, traveled to Phoenix when the team played games against Washington, Utah and Oregon State earlier this season.They said since many of the games this weekend were standing-room-only, fans probably appreciated the extra seating at the festival.IU took its first two games: a 10-2 win against Youngstown State Friday and a 4-2 victory against Stanford Saturday.Both days also saw record attendances for Bart Kaufman Field. Friday’s record of 4,125 fans was broken Saturday with 4,312 fans.Roy Lubovsky is the dining director for IU Athletics, but he coordinated most of the festival’s events.“It got dumped in my lap, and I sort of ran with it,” he said.Lubovsky said IU Athletics modeled the festival after the Super Bowl experience in Indianapolis in 2012.He said the goal was to create an environment where people could join in on the fun, even without a ticket to the game.“It’s more of a nicety, where people can sit and enjoy music,” Lubovsky said. “And it’s all ages.”Lubovsky said the department hoped to create a place where fans of all teams could mingle and enjoy the fun. But almost all the fans at the festival were supporters of IU. Workers at the festival gave away IU-themed towels, posters and pom-poms. IU apparel was also available to purchase.The Athletics Department wanted a type of experience different than tailgating for football games in the fall, but it also saw the festival as a training ground for local food truck Great White Smoke BBQ, which began in October 2013.Truck owner Dave White said he had approached IU Athletics about getting involved with tailgating in the fall, and they invited him to bring his truck to the baseball stadium.“The idea was the live music and the smell of the smoke to bring people in,” White said.Lubovsky said they would close the area about 30 minutes before the first pitch to encourage people to go to the games.Though it was slow on Friday, Lubovsky said he expected there would be more people at the festival through the weekend, when they didn’t have school or work.“By Sunday we’re hoping for 1,000 people,” he said.Dodds said he thought the festival was a huge success. He said having a new facility in Bart Kaufman Field is a big plus to draw people in, and even though it was hot playing music in the sun, he would do it next year if given the opportunity.“The bigger it gets, the better,” Dodds said. “I love stuff like this.”

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/06/regional-festival-features-local-music-food

Immigrants experience discrimination

(05/15/14 2:23am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>She still remembers the day she got into Berkeley three years ago. She’d been rushing to and from the mailbox each day, consumed with trepidation and anxiety. She had opened each admission letter with trembling fingers and bated breath.When Dohkyung Kim got the letter from Berkeley, she didn’t celebrate. She didn’t flounce about emitting a high-pitched squeal of excitement.The university had not offered her funding of any kind, and there was no way her parents could pay for the high costs — not when she was an international student ineligible for student loans or financial aid. Kim’s most cherished dreams slipped away in an empty envelope.***Assistant professor of history Ellen Wu said America is often conceptualized as a melting pot and a nation of immigrants, but both historical and current immigration policies have proven this to be false.“America likes to tell itself that it stands for freedom, democracy and tolerance, but the real story is much more one of white supremacy, exclusion, imperial domination and slavery,” Wu said. “The impetus for regulating Asian immigration came out of the desire of Americans to exclude people from Asia altogether — to bar them from entry, bar them from citizenship and meaningful participation in the U.S.”An examination of the lives of Asian immigrants in Bloomington challenges the concept of universal equality in America. Student Dohkyung Kim, along with business-owner Kyungsil Choi, have both discovered they are not privy to the same opportunities as Americans because of their race and lack of American citizenship. Under U.S. immigration policy, junior Dohkyung Kim is classified as a non-immigrant visa-holder despite the fact that she has lived in Bloomington since she was 12 years old.She came to America as a dependent on her father’s student visa back in 2004. While she speaks English fluently and has American friends, Kim continues to feel unwanted in the U.S.“I don’t feel like I belong here,” Kim said. “We’ve been here for years, and we pay taxes, but we don’t get any benefits.”She has felt this way since her younger brother was initially denied an F-1 student visa to go to college in the U.S.“My brother is completely American, and the possibility that he might not get to stay here really scared him,” Kim said. House Bill 1402 passed in 2012, and it classified her brother as a non-resident for tuition and fee-paying purposes, adding another significant weight to her parents’ already-strained budget.Because Kim does not want to burden them, she plans to return to Korea to get a job and, eventually, to attend graduate school. “The American dream doesn’t exist. To me, that means the opportunity to be happy and live a good life,” Kim said. “For us, for immigrants, there are so many laws that impede our success here.”Wu said understanding exclusive immigration policies is crucial to making sense of American identity. “In thinking about debates on immigration, we end up reflecting on profound, fundamental questions of who is American,” Wu said. “Who gets to consider themselves American? Who gets the power to decide the answers to these questions?”***Kyungsil Choi, 55, owns and manages Sobon, a Korean restaurant in Bloomington. She said she has felt a similar sense of isolation since moving to Bloomington in 2010. Choi immigrated to the U.S. because her two daughters wanted to study in America. Back in Korea, Choi was a music teacher in secondary school. Her younger daughter professed an interest in music and wanted to attend IU to study cello.As a teacher, Choi was well aware that the Korean education system benefits only those who can excel in academia. “You have to be good at studying, or you’re nothing,” she said. “Your rank in school follows you for life. That’s not the case in America — there are opportunities for everyone.” Because Choi did not want her daughters to fend for themselves in a foreign country, she moved with them. “It was a difficult decision, leaving everything behind,” she said. “I didn’t want to break up the family.” Yet, she bid farewell to her parents, siblings and even husband to start a business in America. She applied for an E2 investor visa, which allows individuals to enter and work in the U.S. provided they have a substantial investment large enough to capitalize a new venture and employ American workers. “It is a really hard visa to get,” Choi said. “I was rejected the first time I applied because I didn’t have enough documentation. You have to have money, investment, capital.”Soon she found herself a restaurant owner in America with little experience in managing or operating such a business. Because she does not have a large staff, Choi works an average of 15 hours per day in order to ensure her business operates smoothly. “I have to do everything — cooking, accounting, sorting through tax issues and managing the employees,” Choi said. “Life here is so, so hard — a hundred times harder than life in Korea.” Choi said one of the worst aspects of life in the U.S. is the discrimination she faces from Americans because of her foreign appearance and lack of knowledge of the English language.According to the Pew Research Center’s 2012 report, “The Rise of Asian Americans,” merely 30 percent of foreign-born Korean immigrants in America reported they can speak English well. Choi is not proficient in English and feels uncomfortable whenever she attempts to carry out a conversation with an American. “When I have to go into an office or buy supplies or deal with problems with Americans, I have trouble conveying my meaning,” she said. “I don’t like interacting with Americans because I feel ignored and dismissed. I get so frustrated because I just have to go along with whatever they say since I can’t speak English.”Choi has no American friends in the U.S.“I’ve been living next to my American neighbor for years, but I haven’t ever exchanged one word,” she said. While she interacts more with the Korean community and attends a Korean church, Choi generally keeps to herself and her family. Most of her time is eaten up at the business anyway.“That’s one of the things I miss the most about Korea — the sense of camaraderie you have with others,” she said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to do business in America, and there are many good things here, but this life is so difficult.” ***Wu is often frustrated by the attitude of some Americans that immigrants have no right to complain about the way they are treated in the U.S. since they came here voluntarily.“A response like that doesn’t take into account issues of power and inequality of resources,” Wu said. “Worldwide inequality in terms of resources leads people to seek better lives, however they can, and the kinds of choices they have are limited by circumstances beyond their control.”The influx of Asian immigration into the U.S. is also a result of American presence as a global and imperial power in Asia, she said. “I would like to live in a world where access to opportunities and resources are not tied to such circumstances like accident of birth,” Wu said. “Unfortunately, this is not the case in America.”

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/05/immigrants-experience-discrimination

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, President of Ireland to speak

(05/09/14 5:25am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and the president of Ireland, Michael Higgins, will be speaking at the IU commencement ceremonies this weekend. Both alumni of IU, Higgins and O’Neill have previously been sought after as commencement speaker.Kelly Kish, deputy chief of staff for the Office of the President, said the office approached Higgins and O’Neill more than two years ago, but the timing had not been suitable. Last year, though, the office was able to secure both Higgins and O’Neill for the 2014 spring ceremony. President Higgins will speak at both the 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. undergraduate ceremonies Saturday and O’Neill will make his appearance at the 3 p.m. Friday ceremony. Each speaker will also be presented with a Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the ceremonies. IU President Michael McRobbie said in a press release that the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the speakers for the commencement ceremonies characterize the opportunities and achievements IU’s future graduates will soon face.“Indiana University is deeply honored to have two outstanding alumni, both recognized internationally for their long commitment to public service, addressing our graduates this spring in Bloomington,” McRobbie said. President Higgins was born in Limerick, Ireland, and raised in County Clare. According to the release, he received a Master of Arts degree in sociology from IU in 1967. Before that, he worked as a factory worker and a clerk and attended the University College Galway in Ireland and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, becoming the first person in his family to study at a university. Focused on representing equality and justice, Higgins spent years increasing his level of responsibility in government, from working as a councilor, becoming the Mayor of Galway and spending over 20 years within the Irish Parliament. He was elected as the ninth president of Ireland in 2011.Higgins is also a writer and poet, with two published collections of essays and four collections of poetry.O’Neill has had a wide range of positions after receiving a Master of Public Affairs degree from IU in 1966. From 1961 to 1967, O’Neill worked as a computer systems analyst in the U.S. Veterans Administration and for 10 more years continued the same work for the Office of Management and Budget.He then spent 13 years as the chairman and CEO of the aluminum corporation, Alcoa, according to a press release. In 2001, he was selected as the 72nd secretary of the treasury under President George W. Bush. O’Neill and worked to restore economic confidence by fighting terrorist funding and money laundering following the attacks of Sept. 11. He spent his time in the office improving the nation’s health care systems and the U.S. tax code, as well.“Paul O’Neill has been an extraordinarily successful leader in all sectors of the economy – public, private and non-profit,” said John Graham, Dean of School of Public and Environmental Affairs. “His dedication to public and community service, his business acumen and his strong sense of integrity, occasionally in the face of powerful opposition, are qualities well worth honoring.”Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, U.S. District for the Southern District of California, will be the keynote speaker for the Maurer School of Law at 3 p.m. for the law graduation recognition Saturday. Jessica Campbell

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/05/former-u-s-treasury-secretary-president-of-ireland-to-speak

The last chapter

(05/05/14 4:17am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After her 44-minute long preparation period, Mrs. Marvin walks outside her classroom at the end of the hall and watches the flood of students pass by.One thing is always on her mind as she stands by her door.“I think about what kind of day the students are having,” Mrs. Marvin says.Right before the bell rings for third period, the students perform a ritual. One by one, and sometimes two by two, they file into the classroom, pick up notebooks, slide into seats, place jumbo-sized binders on top of their desks and prepare to learn. Once the bell beckons, a petite blonde woman with glasses at the tip of her nose walks from outside her classroom door and steps into what has been her arena, her niche, her warzone for the past 41 years — the classroom. Studies show the transition from sixth grade to middle school can be the toughest one a child faces, but Patricia Marvin is an expert at handling the distracted, puberty-stricken, disorganized children. She’s been teaching English to seventh and eighth graders at Tri-North Middle School since some of her students’ parents were their age. This year, Mrs. Marvin is one of 41 teachers in the Monroe County Community School Corporation who are retiring. She’s not worn out. As a matter of fact, 63-year-old Mrs. Marvin wouldn’t mind teaching a few more years. But 41 years of teaching, including 30 years at Tri-North, is enough for her. She has four grandchildren, with two more on the way, and she wants to be able to spoil them with her husband while she’s still alive. Her parents weren’t granted that luck with her children.Year after year, Mrs. Marvin has been on a seemingly eternal mission to prepare her middle school students for the dog-eat-dog world that is high school, the next chapter of their life.When Mrs. Marvin was in seventh grade, she studied ballet under world-renowned professional ballet dancers like Andre Eglevsky. She was well on her way to becoming a professional ballet dancer in New York. She danced at the Joffrey Ballet dance company. Her dreams to live out her passion for dancing came to a halt after a sudden injury the summer following her high school graduation. The doctor told her it would take at least three years for her to heal. At 18 years old, Mrs. Marvin realized she would be missing out on the most crucial time for a professional dancer. The Long Island native, who had moved with her parents to Lafayette between her freshman and sophomore year of high school, decided to stay in Lafayette and attend Purdue University. While at Purdue, she taught ballet at the YMCA, worked for a horticulture professor and wrote for the Purdue Exponent for two years. She still did not know what she wanted to do after college. Her mother encouraged her to get a teaching degree, just in case. “I said, ‘I don’t want to teach,’” Mrs. Marvin said. “My mother said, ‘Well, just do it for me.’ I said, ‘All right,’ so I got my education classes done and I student taught. I fell in love with it.” After graduation, she taught high school in Monon, Ind., for four-and-a-half years. She said it was the hardest period of her teaching career because the students were so far behind. After teaching there and getting married to a teacher who taught fourth grade at the school, Mrs. Marvin taught at North Newton High School in Morocco, Ind., for two-and-a-half years. She then took a six-year break from teaching to take care of her four children at home before transitioning to Tri-North Middle School, where she has taught for 30 years. “I got a job here teaching seventh and eighth grade thinking I’ll get a job in high school because I always thought I wanted to be a high school teacher,” Mrs. Marvin said. “I never wanted to leave middle school.”*** On another day, in another seventh-grade class, the students are louder than usual, especially the boys. Mrs. Marvin said it was because of all the candy and sugar the students had during Easter.As soon as the bell rings, one student shushes his peers and the room full of seventh graders gets a little quieter. Mrs. Marvin walks in. Sam raises his hand.“I think I forgot my brain at my house. I don’t know if I can do this.”Mrs. Marvin walks toward the student and lifts up a section of his hair. “Well, I don’t see any holes,” Mrs. Marvin says as she examines his head.“No?” Sam says.She walks back to the center of the classroom.“OK! Notebook! Get that notebook open, we are going to talk about ‘Lawn Boy.’”Last week, the students were learning about inferences. This week, they are learning about themes and are reading chapter 13 from “Lawn Boy” by Gary Paulsen. As Mrs. Marvin reads, she stops every so often to make sure the students understand the difficult words.“‘Expertise,’ what does that word mean?” Mrs. Marvin asks. “Drew?” “What you’re an expert at,” Drew said. The students listen to Mrs. Marvin read the rest of the story attentively as she walks back and forth, looking at the students from time to time. After she finishes reading the chapter all the way through, she tells her seventh graders to open their notebooks and make inferences about what will happen in the next chapter.*** Mrs. Marvin’s teaching career at MCCSC began in 1984, the same year that Tri-North became a middle school in MCCSC. Throughout the time span of three decades, some things have changed and some have stayed the same. She still sees kids that don’t pay attention and kids that don’t bring their materials. “That frustrates me a little bit, but it’s annoyed me for the past 41 years,” Mrs. Marvin said.But kids didn’t have cell phones in the 1980s. Mrs. Marvin said the advances in technology have caused students’ focus to shift. “I think kids are so used to instant gratification,” Mrs. Marvin said. “For example, an instant response to a text message, or an instant score on a video game or instant information over the Internet. They’re not willing to wait, and they’re not willing to take time to work through things like the way people used to when they had to no matter what the subject is.” Years ago, Mrs. Marvin said, there wasn’t collaborative networking between teachers. Now, Mrs. Marvin loves the meetings with her co-workers in the morning. The two classrooms to the left of Mrs. Marvin’s belong to two other English teachers, Lisa Riggins and Myra Farmer. During Mrs. Riggins’ and Mrs. Farmer’s prep period, they talk in Mrs. Riggins’ classroom. Mrs. Marvin was one of the people that hired Mrs. Riggins in 1984.“She’s somebody who’s pumped up, ready to do whatever we need to have done or she’s ready to try new things,” Mrs. Riggins said.They call themselves the “Three Musketeers” because of the tight-knit community they established together throughout the years. They know each other’s children. They spend time outside of the school together. “We understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and celebrations,” Riggins said. “It’s not just about coming to work. We’re a family here.” Both Mrs. Riggins and Mrs. Farmer believe there will be a void when Mrs. Marvin leaves. “In this profession, no one can just slip in,” Mrs. Farmer said. “We all know we’re replaceable, but replaceable doesn’t mean the same quality.” All three of the English teachers said there are many misconceptions about their lives as teachers. “That we work 180 days a year,” Mrs. Farmer said. Mrs. Marvin prepares during the summer.“That we leave at 2:30 in the afternoon,” Mrs. Farmer said. Mrs. Marvin has never left earlier than 4 p.m. and sometimes stays at school until 6 p.m. to finish grading papers and work on lesson plans.“That we check in and check out everyday,” Mrs. Farmer said. “That this is a job, not a profession.”Mrs. Marvin wakes up at 4:45 a.m. to start her day and leaves around 6:30 to prepare for school.“Nowadays, change is rapid fire,” Mrs. Farmer said. “It’s a reaction to symptoms.”Mrs. Farmer referred to the evolving policy actions that have been enacted since she, Mrs. Riggins and Mrs. Marvin started teaching. With the increasing reliance of standardized testing being used to assess, reward and penalize those in the classroom and in schools, all three teachers feel like there isn’t enough beneficial and thorough assessment from the federal and state government. “I don’t remember when I first started teaching people on the outside telling you how to do your job as much, like legislatures,” Mrs. Marvin said. “We are legislated so much today.”The other English teachers look at Mrs. Marvin’s retirement as the beginning of the end of an era in the ever-evolving education reform. During the past 13 years, national education initiatives, like the No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core State Standards, have drastically changed the way the nation assesses school, teacher and student performance. In 2011, then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed legislation that included the implementation and regulation of charter schools, turnaround schools, private school vouchers and teacher evaluations. In the past few months, Indiana became the first state to drop out of Common Core and released similar academic standards. This year was the first time the Indiana Department of Education released the new, standardized teacher evaluations, which rates teachers from highly effective to ineffective. The ratings are tied to when teachers can get raises. After the results came in, many people questioned the validity of the teacher evaluation results. According to the data provided by the Indiana Department of Education, 88 percent of teachers and administrators were assessed as being effective or highly effective in the classroom. About 2 percent needed improvement and less than half a percent were seen as ineffective teachers. Some schools with “D” and “F” ratings didn’t have educators with a rating less than effective. MCCSC did not offer its information this year because of a contract agreement with teachers that ends after the 2014-15 school year. These teachers will be given fewer salary benefits once this new teacher evaluation initiative is enacted. “After that time, there will be a base salary and then the only way you can get a raise will be based on this new teacher evaluation system that the state is putting in place,” Mrs. Marvin said. “There are people that we have talked to in other corporations that are already under it that say even if you are deemed highly effective, depending on how much your corporation has, it could be just $250.”Mrs. Marvin said she is concerned about the ratings not for herself, but for teachers coming after her.“It’s kind of a good time for me to get out,” Mrs. Marvin said. “Not because I’m worried about where I’ll be rated. I think I’ll be fine. It’s going to be very hard to keep good young teachers in the profession.”Mrs. Marvin doesn’t think there is anything wrong with standardized testing in itself. The problem, Mrs. Marvin said, lies in the high-stakes value in standardized testing. “If that one test is so important and the kid has the flu that week, they’re not going to do that well. They need to look more at how (students) are really doing in the classroom.” Teacher and student assessment needs to be more realistic, Mrs. Marvin said. She suggested that asking students to write in descriptive language would be a better way to assess what they are learning, instead of multiple choice questions.“When in life, unless you become an editor, are you going be asked to pick adjectives and adverbs out of a sentence?” she said. “That’s something kids ask me all the time. And that’s a very good point.” *** Mrs. Marvin often dreams of her students at night. She hopes for the best for them.In one corner of her classroom, she has a board filled with post-it notes with inspirational messages, written by her eighth graders to the incoming class. There are post-it notes that say, “Don’t procrastinate” and “Always pay attention in class.” Two years ago, one of her students, Schuyler Barnes, handed her a note he got from his mother, Hannah Bolte.A line from the note read, “May your dreams come true — you have the ability to make that happen!”“It was a note that I had written to her when she was leaving eighth grade just telling her that I felt that she was going to be really successful,” Mrs. Marvin said. “It was kind of an inspirational thing.” Mrs. Marvin said she wrote it because she saw that Bolte was going through a tough time. Still, she is surprised that she kept it for so long. The date on the note says June 4, 1990 — 24 years ago. “It bought tears to my eyes,” Mrs. Marvin said as she recalled the time she saw the note for the first time in more than 20 years.It had a lasting effect on 37-year-old Bolte, who had trouble in English class.“It provided me self-esteem that carried all throughout high school and my career,” Bolte said.Bolte, a master’s graduate student and a professor, now works as an editor in her own independent sole proprietorship for university academic writing services. She said she hopes to inspire her students like Mrs. Marvin inspired her.“It really makes a difference to have an advocate, someone who you regularly interact with who enforces that you’re good enough,” Bolte said. “That makes all the difference.” *** After the bell rings, Mrs. Marvin sighs. It’s still a challenge to teach 150 students after all these years.At the end of the day, at the end of her career, she still wonders about the effect she has on her students.“It just makes you feel good to know that they’re able to follow some of their dreams or what they think they’re going to do or what they wind up doing,” Mrs. Marvin said. “I would hope that people look at me as caring, because I care deeply about my students and my family. That’s pretty much been my life.”

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/05/the-last-chapter

New standards concern academic officials

(04/25/14 2:37am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Indiana State Board of Education member Tony Walker has released a statement of his opinions about the new proposed Indiana academic standards. The Indiana Education Roundtable endorsed the proposed standards April 21 at its meeting, despite protests from some in attendance. The Indiana State Board of Education will vote on the final draft of the standards April 28. Walker said he will vote to approve the standards if they are coupled with sound curricula and good teaching.He said he believes the standards meet the definition of College and Career Readiness as outlined by Indiana Public Law 31-2014. College and Career Readiness is defined as “the standards that a high school graduate must meet to obtain the requisite knowledge and skill to transition without remediation to postsecondary education or training and ultimately into a sustainable career.”Purdue University has the third-largest population of foreign students in the U.S. at 9,509, according to the Institute of International Education’s 2013 Open Door Report. IU-Bloomington has the 13th-largest population of foreign students at 6,547.Walker still has concerns, though, about whether the standards are competitive with international academic benchmarks. According to the statement, Jim Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and professor Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas, said the math and English standards, respectively, are not at the level they could be. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment, the U.S. ranks 35th in the world in math proficiency and 24th in the world in reading proficiency. “Our academic competiveness internationally has real economic impact in higher education and in hiring in Indiana,” Walker said in the statement. “International students and foreign workers are aggressively competing in Indiana for seats at our flagship universities and for our value-added jobs. The academic expectations must reflect this reality.”Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz and Gov. Mike Pence motioned and seconded, respectively, to endorse the standards at the Roundtable meeting. After the endorsement, Pence read a statement, which was met with boos from some in the crowd. “As the first state to withdraw from Common Core, Indiana had a unique responsibility to create new, high standards in an open and serious process that would serve our children and strengthen our school,” Pence said in the statement. “I have long believed that education is a state and local function, and that decisions about our schools should be made closest to the parents and communities that depend upon them. “After a careful review of the process and the outcome, I believe Indiana has accomplished this task and I join the Education Roundtable in forwarding these new Indiana academic standards to the State Board of Education for approval.”

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/04/new-standards-concern-academic-officials

Pay check fairness now

(04/09/14 4:00am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU has a lot of women. About 51 percent of the 32,000 undergraduate students on the Bloomington campus are women — much better than Purdue’s 43 percent, I always like to add. That’s about 16,500 ladies here at IU. Statistics for Indiana as a whole are similar, as 50.8 percent of the population of our state is female, comparable with the national average. Those approximately 3,350,000 Hoosier women are at a significant disadvantage to their male counterparts. Indiana ranks 40th in women’s health nationwide. Sixty-one percent of Indiana women live in a county that does not have an abortion clinic, and Indiana has many restrictions on reproductive rights. In the workplace, women across the country make less than men for working the same jobs. Indiana is one of the worst states nationwide for women in this regard — we rank 46th in terms of the gender pay gap. Hoosier women make 73 cents for every dollar a man makes, compared to 77 cents nationally. In certain areas of our state, it’s even worse. Women make only 68 percent of what men make in the First Congressional district, my home district in the northwest corner of Indiana. President Barack Obama remains committed to eradicating the pay gap across the country. Famously, the very first bill he signed into law was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which expanded court access for women wanting to bring suit.This week, the president signed an executive order that prevents “federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their pay with each other.” Preventing employees from discussing their salaries is clearly a tactic to keep workers, especially women, in the dark about how much they make compared to others. This hampers their ability to take action, whether in the courts or through unionization, to get fair pay for themselves.The same executive order requires federal contractors to report how much they pay women and people of color. About one-quarter of people working in the United States work for federal contractors. Tracking these numbers will allow the government to take further positive action, if necessary. A bill in the Senate, the Paycheck Fairness Act, goes further. It tasks the Department of Labor with “working with employers to eliminate pay disparities.” It also approves money to grant programs intended to educate women in workplace negotiation. These programs would reach not only federal contractors, as the president’s orders do, but all women in our country.These proposals will help the women of Indiana. It is disgraceful that our state lags so far behind the rest of the country in the treatment of women in the workplace. Women deserve to make as much as men do, and they must have access to justice if they are treated unfairly.This struggle has continued for years. American women have made advances, but there’s still work to be done. The women graduating from IU in May will be entering a workforce where they are not yet treated equally.Tuesday was Equal Pay Day. It’s time for the women of Indiana to get fair wages.estahr@indiana,edu

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/04/pay-check-fairness-now

Chinese students open businesses

(04/02/14 4:31am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Deft hands slam moist fish heads against chopping boards. Giant, overworked fridges drone. Workers call to one another in rapid-fire Chinese. Amid the chaos, Qun Sun weaves through aisle after narrow aisle of towering shelves.At Asia Mart in Indianapolis, he picks through racks crammed with freeze-dried seaweed, pickled Chinese mustard leaves and pearl-toned melamine bowls painted to look like fine china. He selects tins of ginger, jasmine and oolong tea leaves, shaking each one close to his right ear. He’s quite a tea aficionado, he says. He knows which tea sells best. For Sun’s new Chinese restaurant, Lotus Garden, it is critical to choose tea that complements the dishes. Sun grabs yü yuan, or fish-meat balls, for hot pot — a soup-like dish containing meat and vegetables. Then pastes, powders and oils for dishes with names like chuan pao yao hua — pork kidneys — and hong you chao shou — wontons in chili oil.He jerks to a halt. “Where’s my list?”The grocery list — scribbled in Chinese on a crumpled sheet of notepaper — is important but not necessary. After months of making this weekly shopping trip, Sun already knows exactly what he needs and where to find it.But he still worries. There is a lot at stake. One mistake could put his investment in Lotus Garden, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, at risk.He finally finds the list under a pack of dried lotus leaves he sifted through a moment before and jams it into his side pocket. “Sometimes I’m not very careful,” he says. “Now I have to practice not to do it. Every mistake will add to the cost of my restaurant.” A 21-year-old junior at IU, Sun owns Lotus Garden with three other Chinese students. It is the first restaurant he has ever owned. And it’s only the second job he has had.As the major shareholder, Sun takes charge of most business planning, people management and other day-to-day duties.He is part of a growing breed of young Chinese students establishing businesses in Bloomington. Lotus Garden offers authentic Szechuan food. 3Xs Delivery offers barbecued meat and vegetable kebabs — popular street food in China. MoNo Beauty Shop sells cosmetics imported from Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Someone recently offered to sell Sun Joyce Chinese Restaurant and Karaoke, which is currently being built in downtown Bloomington.Along with the influx of Chinese nationals pursuing higher education in the United States, the Chinese student population at IU has tripled to more than 3,000 within the last five years.This has created a greater demand for authentic Chinese food, retail and other services. It has become a viable market that Chinese students themselves, typically in management-related academic tracks, are moving to cater to. These Chinese student-entrepreneurs all share common motivations to gain experience in real-world business outside the classroom. They also want to achieve some form of independence from their parents’ financial support. Sun’s primary source of inspiration is his father, a prominent businessman in their hometown of Yantai in northeastern China. The elder Sun owns businesses dealing in food, medicine and coal. When Sun noticed the opportunity to set up a restaurant because there was “no real Chinese food” in Bloomington, he turned to his father. The experience of operating a small business would help him understand the process of running a big one, his father said.Since opening Aug. 1 last year, Sun said Lotus Garden is packed to the brim most nights, especially Fridays. The 14-space parking lot fills fast.The emerging trend of Chinese-student enterprises contributes to more diverse cultural and business landscapes in Bloomington. But for these young student-entrepreneurs, it is simply a matter of learning how to juggle between roles.It’s simply about growing up.***Mandarin is spoken around corners in IU academic buildings. Along dorm corridors. From the next table in a dining hall. In fall 2009, there were 1,008 Chinese students enrolled at IU. Two years later, there were 2,289. The number rose to 3,078 in fall 2013. A majority of the foreign students on campus are Chinese. The same is often true at many other American universities. The Open Doors 2013 report, released by the Institute of International Education in November, revealed that China, the top place of origin, contributes to almost 30 percent of the international student population in the U.S. — up from 15 percent five years ago.Mainland Chinese enrollments in American higher education institutions increased by 21.4 percent in the past academic year, to 235,597 students.For the same year, Indiana is listed as one of three states with the highest rates of growth in international student enrollment — a 10-percent increase.Chinese student organizations, primarily the IU Chinese Students and Scholars Association, present their culture in highly visible ways on campus, entertaining large crowds during spring and mid-autumn festival celebrations.Off-campus, Chinese students flock to restaurants for a taste of home. “Of course more Chinese students make a difference,” said Kathy Tzeng, a long-time Bloomington resident. Tzeng opened Lantern House in the 1970s, which she says was the second Chinese restaurant in town. She is now one of five owners of Mei Wei, or “delicious flavor,” a Chinese restaurant that opened in February last year. The Bloomington restaurant scene has evolved over the past 40 years, she said. These days, people can afford to eat out at restaurants more frequently. The increase in wealth typically means Chinese students are dining out more and ordering more expensive dishes.Lotus Garden is one of 21 known Chinese restaurants in Bloomington, and the only one run by students.When designing the menu, Sun placed emphasis on catering to Chinese students’ tastes, choosing to include more atypical dishes like “bullfrog with Sichuan peppercorn,” “Thai-style pig ears” and “lamb testicles with cumin.”Sun searched the Chinese immigrant community to find a chef, placing ads in national Chinese-language publication “World Journal.” Early last year, Hao Yu boarded a Greyhound in Flushing, N.Y., for Bloomington. He was selected as Lotus Garden chef from eight other applicants.Yu received about $4,500 along with a 10-percent share of profits at Lotus Garden. Sun provided housing for Yu and his kitchen aides. After less than a year, however, Yu chose to leave. His last day was March 26. Sun said the split was amicable.Yu has been replaced with two chefs. Like Yu, they are from China and were previously based in New York City. Like him, they make above-market wages.Choosing to pay his chefs higher wages makes good business sense, Sun said. It serves as an incentive, enabling them to develop a sense of ownership and loyalty to Lotus Garden.“If (other restaurants) want to hire my chef, if they want to pay more salary to hire him — if he goes to their restaurant, we will close,” Sun said, lowering his voice to a whisper.***To strangers, Sun introduces himself as “Blake.” To his friends and others in the Bloomington Chinese community, he is addressed affectionately — sometimes teasingly — as Sun lao ban, or Boss Sun. As a freshman in 2011, Sun got a job working at Wright Food Court. He worked hard and enjoyed the experience, he said, but it didn’t satisfy him for long. The following year, Sun decided to open a restaurant. Sun wasn’t able to take the mandatory Integrative Core component of the Kelley School of Business curriculum because he spent the summer working to launch Lotus Garden. Unwilling to delay his graduation date, he decided to transfer to a management track in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.“I didn’t want to wait half a year — what a waste,” he said. “The tuition can’t buy the experience I have here.”Though supportive of his dreams, Sun’s family feared he was taking on too much.Now, nine months after opening Lotus Garden, Sun says he has finally proven himself. He is able to cover all his expenses, from tuition fees to trips abroad during school breaks.Sun admits he is not doing as well in school as he used to, but it is a sacrifice he said he is willing to make. He developed a strong sense of independence growing up. From the age of 11 through 18, he attended boarding school, returning home on occasion.His upbringing, Sun said, has taught him not to fear difficulties and to find solutions to problems despite the circumstances. Sun invested about $50,000 in Lotus Garden, almost twice the amount each of his co-owners contributed. Eighty percent came from regular allowance provided by his father. The rest were loans from two of his roommates. He spent almost $100,000 remodeling, replacing equipment and fixing plumbing in the building — a property along North Walnut Street that used to house Korean eatery Shin’s Family Restaurant. He pays about $4,000 a month in rent.The goals he set when starting out were easy to achieve, Sun said. Such success has spurred him on to take more risks in his business and prove naysayers wrong.“In the past, I’m like a child in the family,” he said. “So they tell me what should I do, what shouldn’t I do. And educate me — a lot. I want them know I do the right thing now. And now I see — I think they are proud of me.”***Chinese students are not too fond of American food, said 3Xs owner and IU sophomore Xiong Xiong.“We miss Chinese food a lot,” she said. “That’s why we start food businesses.”3Xs is named for the three female delivery business partners — Xiong, Rui Xu and Xianglin Wu. Two male co-owners handle grilling of the meat and vegetable kebabs, made with ingredients from Kroger on a grill bought from Walmart.Unlike many other Chinese parents, Xiong said, hers encourage pursuit of other interests beyond her studies.Xiong, like Sun, is a SPEA management major. Like Sun and Yuan, her entrepreneurial endeavors are part of self-improvement efforts.“I realized how hard it is to earn money,” she said. “It’s an experience I can look back on and tell my grandkids how, when I was in university, I had a business.”MoNo Beauty Shop sells cosmetics through a registered vendor account with e-marketplace AliExpress. Due to MoNo’s success, owners Mei Yuan and Huan Zhang have a team of ambassadors representing the business in other American colleges. They plan to expand to an online store soon.There isn’t a formal estimate of the total number of Chinese student-owned businesses in Bloomington. No one keeps track, or is able to, since businesses are either listed under other names for legal reasons, or not registered at all. For unregistered businesses, transactions are made over the phone or online, usually through Chinese social media platforms like Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat.Other Internet-based businesses include the popular dai gou — “purchase on behalf” — system, where Chinese students take orders for goods in the U.S., which they bring to clients during visits home. Due to high tariffs and unavailability of certain products in China, this is an easy and lucrative enterprise.These business-savvy student-entrepreneurs have the advantage of growing up in a China that has opened its doors to foreign influence, said Dan Li, associate professor of international business at the business school. The country underwent drastic changes following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. China’s rapid development since then has played a big part in shaping the younger generation’s mindset, she said.“They have all kinds of resources,” Li said. “They’re sensitive to business opportunities. They’ve seen more successes in China than failures. They have everything any entrepreneur could dream about.”Yajing Chen, a graduate assistant with the IU Office of International Services, said difficulty in finding a job in the U.S. due to immigration regulations pushes international students to seek opportunities for business experience in other ways. An overseas experience never means only an academic one — running a business is part of the learning process.While there are more business opportunities in China, there is a more structured, but open, business environment in America’s more mature market, Li said. “The issue is uncertainty in China,” she said. “In the U.S., rules and regulations are written out. In China, there are many hidden rules. Things are ruled by who has the power at the moment. Compared to the risks in China, people choose to migrate their wealth abroad.”Sun said Lotus Garden has enabled him to foster many new relationships within a diverse community.Frequent customer Larry Singell, executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has begun to develop a close friendship with Sun, rooted in shared knowledge of Chinese language and culture. Singell said he is impressed by Sun’s maturity and business acumen. “A good part of learning in college is what’s called collateral learning,” he said. “Students who demonstrate these kinds of skills — willing to take a risk, observe and find a need, then be able to provide and serve that need — they’re going to be quite successful later in life.”***Weekly grocery days are always the same for Sun. A full day of traveling, shopping, and bargaining in Indianapolis and a night of waiting tables back at the restaurant. Sun typically works four days a week. Lotus Garden, with its stained glass lamps, floor-to-ceiling tinted windows and traditional Chinese paintings stuck haphazardly onto scarlet, plum and olive-colored walls, has become an important training ground for him.It is where he faces constant challenges and works to achieve his goals.At 21, Sun is at least 15 years younger than a handful of his employees.“Maybe they think I’m just a child,” he said. “But yeah, I am the boss. I’m learning how to manage, to explore what’s the way I should use.”In February, Sun and his partners put the restaurant on the market for more than twice their initial investment. They received offers from several Chinese students, but Sun ultimately decided to keep the business.Lotus Garden is a responsibility he is not yet willing to shed. Motivated by past successes, he believes there’s still more he can do.He wants to construct a mini garden, featuring a lotus pond, in the vacant lot beside the restaurant.Sun will graduate in May 2015. Even if he goes to a different city for graduate school, returns to China or starts new ventures, Sun plans to keep Lotus Garden, preserving it for a steady flow of income. He offers an ancient Chinese proverb — qi hu nan xia. Once you’ve mounted the tiger, it is unwise to get down. There is nothing to do but ride on.“Just like I have started and I run it, I must keep it going, going further,” he said.Even Sun’s greatest mentor, his father, has begun to see the change in him. Now Sun is able to hold his own in father-son conversations — voicing his own opinions and partaking in a mutual exchange of ideas.“From a boy to a man — I need to think about myself, about my life,” Sun said. “I’m not a child anymore.”

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/04/chinese-students-open-businesses

Reconsidering internships

(04/01/14 4:00am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For a lot of us, growing up during the Great Recession has really tapered our enthusiasm regarding job prospects after college.Year after year, we’re told of the importance of internships in securing a non-guaranteed lifeline that might — really emphasizing the might here — lead us to a full-time job after our four or five years of going to class and hoping we don’t end up in mom and dad’s basement after graduation. If we’re looking for some reassurance that an unpaid internship might be the golden ticket in a market where the unemployment rate for people between the ages of 19 and 31 stands at 15.8 percent, we probably shouldn’t look to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. According to that organization, only 37 percent of unpaid interns received a full-time job offer afterwards. In comparison, 35.2 percent of people received a full-time job offer despite never participating in an internship. So, naturally, more and more people are questioning whether internships are even worth it. It ultimately comes down to whether the internship is paid or not. According to that same report by the NACE, 63.1 percent were offered a full time job, compared to 37 percent of unpaid interns. It’s not clear why paid interns ultimately outperform unpaid ones in the job market, but it has brought to attention the costs and benefits of internship programs for both employers and students. Last week, Canada’s Ministry of Labour ruled that magazine internships, which have for years depended on unpaid interns to staff their offices, violate laws that prohibit full-time work without pay. And just last year in the U.S., Conde Nast ended its internship programs after low-paid and unpaid interns sued the parent company of publications such as Vogue, GQ and others for paying them less minimum wage. Conde Nast argued that ending its internship programs was a better decision for the company than paying their interns. The cases are still pending. Many defenders of unpaid internships argue the point of such programs — even if pay isn’t an immediate outcome of them — is that they ultimately provide experience and other intangible benefits.But it seems that more and more unpaid internship programs are losing their appeal unless interns are able to support themselves financially or have someone who can. What is even more concerning is that because unpaid interns are not considered employees, almost all of them lack the same protections afforded to regular workers.That’s why last week the New York City Council voted to define interns as employees “without regard to whether the employer pays them a salary or wage.” This means unpaid interns now have the same protections from sexual harassment and discrimination as all other workers. Only Washington, D.C., and Oregon have passed similar legislation. Next semester, I’ll be interning in D.C. through the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. The internship will be unpaid, and in spite of that fact, I’m very much looking forward to it. But the reality is that unpaid internships have to be reexamined. Interns should be afforded the same protections as regular workers. And when it comes to pay, all of us would like some of the fruits of our labor. Instead of only talking about providing pay for internships, we would much rather be talking about providing jobs for our generation and not the lifelines that might lead to us to one, any day of the week.edsalas@indiana.edu

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/04/reconsidering-internships

Artist balances work and passion

(03/05/14 4:52am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In the middle of his shift, as he pushes a trash can down a crowded hallway in the Indiana Memorial Union, the artist stops in front of a painting on the wall. The electric colors beg to explode outside the frame. “I wish I could’ve added a little more gray here,” Joel Washington says, his hand hovering above the canvas. The acrylic painting shows jazz legend Wes Montgomery thumb-strumming his hollow back electric guitar. Washington painted it 15 years ago. He often paints portraits of famous musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, the Beatles and Billie Holiday.“When I look at this,” he says, examining his Montgomery portrait, “I see ways I could add more color to it. But it’s already paid for, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.” Students hurry past, but they don’t notice Washington in his uniform. He doesn’t blame them. After all, he has other things to do as well. His job requires him to always keep it moving. He has bathrooms to clean, floors to mop, glass windows to spray. “It’s like I got my own reality show with all these cameras around me,” Washington says. “There’s security everywhere. I got to get back to work.” He takes one last glance at his painting, then turns around and pushes the trash can toward another hallway.*** Washington lives in two worlds. One where his art of musicians, artists, clowns, movie stars and IU faculty fill the city he’s called home for years, and one where he works to pay the bills. Somewhere in between those two jobs lies the dream to make art a full time job, showcasing his psychedelic acrylic paintings to the world. Like many artists, he is waiting for his big break — the moment when his art earns him a living. The moment when he can finally break away. At 54 years old, he believes it’ll come along, someday. “I’m going to continue networking and wait for someone to be interested, but in the meantime, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing,” Washington says.So, once again — just like every weekday — Washington rises at 3:45 a.m. After he gets ready, he locks his apartment door and carefully treads down a flight of stairs. He drags himself into the pitch dark, serene morning for the 25-minute hike to the IMU. As soon as Washington clocks in at 5 a.m., he begins to prepare the IMU for the day’s inhabitants. He becomes the shy greeter, the sweeper, the cleaner and the observer once he’s on the clock, but the art never leaves his mind. Washington checks his assignments for the day, then pulls a bright yellow Kaivac cleaning machine into an elevator and heads upstairs to fill it with water from the supply closet. He opens the gate to the billiards area, disappearing into a dark abyss. As soon as he turns on the lights, the room brightens and Washington appears in full color. A supervisor walks past to make sure he is on task. “You got to do what you got to do to earn that dollar,” Washington says. Washington puts a neon yellow ”Closed for Cleaning” sign on the door of the men’s restroom.He is alone in his territory. He has to make sure everything in his designated hallway — the computer lab, the billiards and the ATM area — are ready for students.However, things are different when he’s at home. When he’s home, he’s usually painting. And when he’s painting, he’s usually alone. And when he’s alone, it’s always quiet. *** Washington put in a DVD and plopped down on his couch. In sepia color, the words “Wizard of Oz” appeared on the television screen. He grabbed a tube of Cadmium yellow paint — one of 14 paint tubes on the table — and squeezed out the last tiny blob onto his palette, a white paper plate. Washington was adding the finishing touches to a painting of jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie blowing his trumpet, layering more color and depth onto the late trumpet player’s face and body. The whole piece only took him a few days. He painted commission pieces for other people the past few weeks. Dizzy was for himself. Painting is his therapy. It’s how he meditates and reflects. He whirled a black paintbrush in murky green water, tapped it on the side of the cup, and dabbed the tip of the brush into the bright yellow paint. He shaded in the root of Dizzy’s long, narrow nose. He squinted, leaning his head forward or to the side as he thought of what to tackle next. “When I was growing up I used to look at movies, fantasies,” Washington said. “It kept me away from the everyday stuff.” Washington grew up in Haughville, Ind., a low-income neighborhood 10 miles outside of Indianapolis.His first dream was to be a Disney animator. As a child, he watched George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine, an animated movie based on music from the Beatles. He started drawing sketches, cartoons. His apartment houses numerous production sales, most notably from the Fat Albert cartoons. By the time he was a teenage, he knew he wanted to be a full-time painter. “I use to draw all over the walls as a kid back then,” Washington said. His older sister Marsha remembers how imaginative he was. “He would draw caricatures of people, but if it was on my end of the stick, I didn’t think it was funny at all,” she chuckled. Washington moved to Bloomington when he was 15, graduated from Harmony School and spent a year at Ivy Tech. For years, he has designed and sold skateboard decals locally.He loves human expression, whether it’s classic movies like “Casablanca,” music by Billie Holiday or pop art by Andy Warhol and Peter Max. Pop culture still influences Washington’s work. His 10-piece Frank Zappa series hangs in Laughing Planet Cafe. He has James Dean in the Village Deli, and Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins in the African American Arts Institute. The Indiana State Museum purchased his Jazz Man piece in 2007. The piece was featured along with three of his other art works in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, for three years. In 2010, he had a 50th birthday arts show in the City Hall Atrium. That same year, he put his Michael Jackson commemorative portrait in the hands of famed producer Quincy Jones. In 2012, he presented his David Baker to the jazz composer and IU music professor. From January 21 to October 14, 2012, the Indiana State Museum featured 24 African American contemporary artists from Indiana in an exhibit titled Represent. One of the paintings featured was a 6-foot scene of the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown getting helped up by one of his background performers after falling to his knees during one of his famous cape routines. Kisha Tandy, the assistant curator for History and Culture at the museum, organized the exhibit. Seeing Washington’s art come alive, so large and bold, is what makes people connect to his work, Tandy said.“When I saw it, I got it,” Tandy said. “Even though I never saw him live, I saw him perform on television. Joel captured the essence of James Brown in the painting. He tells the story of music history through his artwork.” Back at home, Washington sets his painting aside and thinks about the Tin Man, the character he most closely resembles in the “Wizard of Oz.” “He was searching for a heart, and he already had one,” Washington said. “I always try to be compassionate. There are things I search for that I already had. What’s important for me is to be humble. I don’t have an ego, I just want to be as kind to people as I can.” Washington paused. “You can’t be ashamed of what God gave you,” he said. *** In his father’s house in Indianapolis, there are old school report cards. “At the top of all of them, it says ‘Joel is a great artist, but we wish he would focus on his other school work,’” Washington said. Washington was born in February 1960 in Indianapolis. He grew up in Haughville with an older sister, a younger sister and a younger brother.Marsha Washington, his older sister by a year, said she still believes Joel will make it as a full-time artist. “I have great faith in God that a perfect window or opportunity will open with his work,” she said.Washington says he faintly remembers his mother and father divorcing at a young age. He recalls his mother and his siblings moving up to Bloomington while he lived with his father in Indianapolis. When he was 15, he moved to Bloomington to live with his mother. He would call Bloomington home for the next 39 years. As a young man in Bloomington, he joined a b-boy group and started his “Lab Ratical” cartoon skateboard designs around the skate parks in Bloomington. Washington pulled out photos of himself as a teenager in the 1970s and 1980s.His pictures show a young, black man in ‘80s fitted, hip garb breakdancing and skating with his friends.In one of them, he’s breakdancing in T.I.S. Bookstore, where he used to work.He was a member of a multicultural skateboarding group and was featured in a national skateboard magazine. In one particular picture, he’s skateboarding near a basketball court, which used to be near the Bloomington Hospital.Washington says he has about 300 skateboards in his possession. He designs a skateboard line and sells them to skateboard shops in Bloomington like Rhett Skateboarding. Some of his skateboards have turned into works of art. Some are vintage. Some he rides. Washington has been riding since he arrived in Bloomington. He started working at the Union in the ‘80s, first as a food service worker and then as a custodian. He’s been there for almost 30 years. He’s always ready to move on, to do more and do better art shows. He said his mom got him started on his first, and what he considers his best, art show. “What I miss about her is that she was always encouraging me with my art,” Washington said. “She always pushed us to go for whatever we believed in. She was the one who told me that I would be where I am now.”Washington still struggles with balancing his two worlds. Pygmalion’s Art Supply Sales Clerk Ben Dines said the goal for any artist is to work on the craft full time. Dines, who also teaches private lessons, said Washington gets his canvas and paints from the store. He was amazed to know that Washington was self-taught. “That is really impressive,” Dines said. “I believe that Joel has something good going for him because it’s difficult to sell paintings.” Washington said he plans to show his work in bigger cities.“I mean, I enjoy doing stuff in Bloomington, but I want everybody to see my work, and I can’t do that if I’m not making that move,” Washington said. “I won’t rest until I’ve made that jump into showing people my work, whether it’s in Indianapolis, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, L.A.” He still wants to be able to put on a new, bigger art show. But with a heap of commissions to do, he has trouble finding the time. “It’ll be the first show I’ve done in four years,” Washington said.Aspirations aside, Washington doesn’t mind his job as a custodian. Roy Robertson, the custodial director at the IMU, said Washington knows a lot of people around campus. “For Joel, as busy as he is, all that he has to cover, I think he does a good job at trying to balance the social interaction he gets here with getting his job done and staying focused on what his tasks are,” Robertson said. “There’s so much going on for that young man. It is a full tough job for him to do. I wouldn’t want to be as talented as that in such a public venue.” Washington said he’s not afraid of losing time. Every year is a blessing, especially at 54. “Don’t remind me,” Washington said, “The more you worry about it, the older you get.” On his 54th birthday in February, Washington walked with a visitor around the IMU to look at his favorite pieces of art. He tended to be drawn to bright, colorful pieces like his own. “Sometimes I wonder what the artist was thinking, but for the most part I just admire them for what they are.”*** At 1:30 p.m., Washington walks downstairs to the employee center and clocked out. After work, he wants to take a nap. He’s been feeling tired. He hasn’t been getting enough sleep, and he doesn’t know why he’s waking up an hour before his alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m. He’s celebrating his birthday with his older sister Marsha at her house. She’s fixing him chicken and dumplings. For the first times in a while, Washington doesn’t have anything else planned but to rest. Editor’s Note: The reporter is not related to the artist Joel Washington.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/03/artist-balances-work-and-passion

Roy coming to Comedy Attic

(02/20/14 5:27am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Comedy Attic owner Jared Thompson said comedian John Roy is severely underrated.On Feb. 20 through Feb. 22, Roy will be performing his record-breaking 10th show at the Comedy Attic. Depending on the day, ticket prices range from $6 to $12.“I honestly believe that John Roy is not only one of the funniest comedians I know, but also one of the most criminally underrated ones,” Thompson said. “I truly believe he should have been recognized more than he already is right now. Our audiences and everyone else at the Comedy Attic love him and we strongly believe in his career.”Currently living in West Hollywood, Roy has had many key appearances throughout his years. He has appeared on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, the Tonight Show and Conan.He also performed duringBloomington’s Limestone Festival last year, and has a podcast called “Don’t Ever Change” that discusses teenage life and high school stories.John Roy is one of the few acts who performs at the Comedy Attic twice a year. Thompson said Roy is distinct in because his standup act consists of his old material mixed with his newer material.“All the material I perform is based off of my own life,” Roy said. “Every joke comes from my reality of living in L.A., and the relationships I have encountered throughout the years.” Thompson said it is rare that comedians come to the Comedy Attic twice a year based on their ability to create new jokes and routines. “John is one of those guys who writes new jokes and understands what is relevant in current comedy and not a lot of other comedians know how to do that,” Thompson said.Roy grew up in Chicago, where he started in a band after graduating college. His friends then encouraged him to do standup comedy where he performed at open mics in city bars until he gained fans and a reputation.“What keeps me doing comedy is the way you need a reason to put on a show to entertain others, and that motivates me to be at my finest,” Roy said.He said he has enjoyed performing at the Comedy Attic in the past.Each new standup performance is an opportunity to gain new fans, Roy added.He said a quality comedy club helps bring in customers.“The Comedy Attic is a very well-run club that gives a sense of business by doing everything right for their customers and workers,” Roy said. “I hope Bloomington residents are able to recognize that they have one of the best comedy bars in the country.”

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/02/roy-coming-to-comedy-attic

Ferrell, Johnson to continue debate

(02/14/14 5:56am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When college basketball’s 2012 recruiting classes were finalized, a great debate between Indiana’s preeminent basketball rivals was sparked.IU and Purdue each signed one of the Hoosier State’s top two point guard recruits, with Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell committing to IU and Ronnie Johnson signing to play for Purdue. Since their commitments, the two Indianapolis natives have fueled a now two-year argument between Hoosiers and Boilermakers about which player is best.Both players graduated as top-100 national recruits, as ranked by recruiting service Rivals.com, though the service gave Ferrell the edge as the state’s No. 1 point guard.The Park Tudor School graduate was rated the country’s No. 19 overall player — No. 2 in Indiana. Johnson, out of North Central High School, was ranked No. 94 in the nation and No. 7 in the state. On Signing Day for the class of 2012, IU Coach Tom Crean heaped praise on his newly-signed point guard.“Yogi is a great floor leader who has the ability to make others better and get his own shot,” Crean said Nov. 10, 2011. “More than anything, he is a proven year-round winner.”In announcing his college decision on an IndyStar.com video, Johnson lauded Purdue Coach Matt Painter and his staff on making Purdue a fit for him.“I like Purdue a lot, and I like the coaching staff,” he said in May 2011. “I thought I just saw a better opportunity for me to just go and play.”Since their commitments, the two now-sophomore guards have recorded almost identical career averages, with Ferrell earning a slight advantage in points, assists and 3-point shooting.His line of 11.6 points, 2.9 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game is similar to that of Johnson, which comes in at 10.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. Statistically, the two are separable by only 3-point shooting percentage — Ferrell’s 39 percent being well ahead of Johnson’s 26 percent — and team performance. Crean’s Signing Day quip about Ferrell has proved to be accurate. The 6-foot sophomore has started every one of IU’s 60 games in the last two seasons, with IU winning 43 of those and reaching the Sweet Sixteen in the 2013 NCAA Tournament.This season, he has stepped up from his fifth-option role on last year’s preseason No. 1-ranked team to become the Hoosiers’ most reliable scorer, averaging a Big Ten-leading 18.5 points per game.Crean said his point guard’s transformation to a first-option scorer is a result of his work ethic.“He is a tremendous worker and a tremendous player,” he said in a Tuesday press conference. “He continues to work at it at a very high level. He wants to be a great player, and he really wants to be a great leader. When you work that hard and when you want to win that bad, you can’t help but get better and better. And that’s exactly what he is doing.”By comparison, Purdue has compiled a 30-28 record during Johnson’s tenure in West Lafayette, missing the NCAA Tournament and falling to Santa Clara during the second round of the College Basketball Invitational last year.The two Indianapolis point guards will spark the debate once again Saturday when Ferrell’s Hoosiers travel to West Lafayette looking for a third consecutive victory against Johnson’s Boilermakers. A win against Purdue would snap a two-game losing streak for IU. Ferrell said the Hoosiers, himself especially, must improve their mental approach to the game to escape their struggles.“We’ve just got to get more intelligent on our team, I feel like,” he said. “It starts, of course, with me and (senior forward Will Sheehey). Always does. We’re the front-runners for that.”Follow reporter Alden Woods on Twitter @acw9293

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/02/ferrell-johnson-to-continue-debate

Students showcase research on freedom, wellness to kick off Black History Month

(02/10/14 3:35am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center organizes a First Friday Family Dinner every month, but this month NMBCC decided to do something different.In honor of Black History Month, the NMBCC worked with the Black Graduate Student Association to organize the first Scholars Research Symposium. The Research Symposium allowed some of IU’s black students to showcase their research in the fields of freedom and wellness. “The idea was to showcase what black students were doing on campus and to show students were thriving academically,” NMBCC Director Stephanie Power-Carter said.The students presented their research in the NMBCC Bridgewaters Lounge, where students, faculty and staff gathered to view the work. It gave students an opportunity to come together and network, Power-Carter said.Leighton Johnson, an IU senior and the IU Student Association Chief of Diversity, Inclusion and Advocacy, said he felt inspired. “It’s refreshing for students who look like me and come from the same background as me to showcase their ambition,” Johnson said. “The African-American scholars displaying their research set a good example for the underclassmen. We’re role models, lifting as we climb.” Junior and administrative worker at the NMBCC Nichelle Whitney said she appreciated the opportunity and the effect the Research Symposium could have on underclassmen who attended the symposium. “It gives undergraduates a chance to connect with graduate students and potentially connect with a mentor,” she said.After the hour-long symposium, the First Friday Family Dinner began.The dinner took place in the NMBCC Grand Hall, and the students were served a meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans while a stand-up comedy special performed. This event is only one of the many events the NMBCC will organize during Black History Month. It coincides with the NMBCC Black History Month theme, “Let’s Move! Freedom and Wellness in a Civil Society.” This event, like many others which take place this month, aspired to encourage the IU community to be active and reflective. “It was a light and fun way to kick off Black History Month,” Whitney said.Follow reporter Javonte Anderson on Twitter at @JavonteA.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/02/students-showcase-research-on-freedom-wellness-to-kick-off-black-history-month

Court to Court

(02/04/14 5:06pm)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>All these years later, he remembers the chills that crawled down his spine each time he stepped onto the court. He can still see the gymnasium lights beaming overhead. He hears the chant of the crowd booming from the bleachers. Whenever he played, his worries vanished and his mind honed to the thump of the basketball. On the court, he was home. No. 22 Shane Schafer, then 16, often played guard. He wasn’t the best. It was a fight to earn his spot on the powerhouse team at Andrean High School in Merrillville, Ind. But it was all he wanted. That passion was sidelined when sickness shelved his junior-year season.When he asked the Indiana High School Athletic Association for that time back, they said no. When Schafer filed suit and the judge allowed him to play, the IHSAA countered with another rule to keep him off the court. As judge after judge sided with the Schafers, the IHSAA filed appeal after appeal to justify its exercise of power and maintain they were in the right. For 22 years, the legal case dragged on, like an overtime that wouldn’t end. “They couldn’t admit they were wrong,” Schafer said, now 39-years-old. “They couldn’t let go. They had to fight ’til the bitter end.”Today, after another ruling in December, the court battle is nearing a resolution. * * * The court to court saga has been a battle of wills and endurance. It stands as the longest legal battle the IHSAA has ever fought. A series of judges railed against the governing body through the years. Early courts found the way the IHSAA applied its rules to Schafer to be “arbitrary and capricious.” It characterized the IHSAA’s decades-long defense as “frivolous, unreasonable, and groundless.” Multiple court opinions questioned the IHSAA’s motives, wondering aloud if its tactics were meant to intimidate challengers to its power. C. Eugene Cato, then the association’s commissioner, was asked in court why the IHSAA insisted on fighting the case.“I don’t know why,” he said.The love of the game, the beating heart of small towns across the Hoosier nation, was threatened by the very organization entrusted to “encourage and direct wholesome amateur athletics in the high schools of Indiana.”The power play shadowed Shane Schafer as he graduated from Andrean, then through his college years, his wedding and the birth of his two daughters. Though he admits the case made him bitter, his memories of playing still bring a smile to his face. Earning a spot on the Andrean High School basketball team was a matter of pride, and it became part of Schafer's high school identity. Teammates became best friends. They hung out outside of practice. Before games, the friends would eat dinner at Schafer’s house. They felt the pulse of early 1990s rap in the locker room as they readied themselves to play. “The fulfillment of just being with that team,” Schafer said, “was just greater than anything else for me.” He worked his way to the varsity team his junior year. He was positioned for a successful senior year, and who knew, maybe college play? As winter hit, so did chronic sinus pain that eventually forced Schafer off the court, away from school and into the hospital for surgery. The recovery was complicated and lengthy. Schafer missed so much school that Andrean allowed him to re-do his junior year.When he wrote to the IHSAA to ask for another year on the court, the governing body refused. IHSAA rules prevent students from playing more than eight consecutive semesters. Again the family appealed. Again, the IHSAA said Schafer was ineligible for the year in question. But this time the organization cited another rule that banned him from half of the only year he had left. The IHSAA’s refusal sparked Shane’s uncle, attorney Timothy Schafer, to step in and file suit. They took the case to a Lake County Superior Court in November 1991. “I felt that because we chose to appeal that first ruling, they were going to show me,” Shane Schafer said. “They were going to find a rule to apply to me to knock me down even further.”The Lake Superior Court ruled that Schafer “appears to be entitled to take part in athletic competition” during the second semester of his junior year, according to court documents. Teammates, coaches and family rallied around Schafer. He even received an encouraging handwritten letter from a former coach. “It was inspiring for me to keep up the fight,” Schafer said. At the request of the IHSAA, the case was moved to the Jasper Circuit Court, where Judge Raymond Kickbush ruled on the case in January 1992. He concluded IHSAA rules were “overly broad, overly inclusive, arbitrary, and capricious and do not bear a fair relationship to the intended purpose of the rules ...”The same court characterized the IHSAA’s defense as frivolous, unreasonable and groundless. The court system eventually allowed Schafer to take to play that month, almost one year after the sinus problems benched him. He still remembers that first time back on the basketball court. Teammates drowned him in a sea of high-fives as he made his way through the locker room. As the second quarter neared its end, Schafer hit a half-court shot. “I felt like I could be me again,” Schafer said. “I felt like I was in high school again.”The IHSAA tried again to bar Schafer from playing — this time during the 1992-93 school year — appealing up to the Indiana Supreme Court, which chose to not hear the case. Schafer would be allowed to play his senior year, though he fell and broke his hand midway through that season, dashing his dreams of senior year glory. And though Schafer was again off the court, the legal fees absorbed by Shane’s uncle had grown to the tens of thousands. The Schafers requested a hearing, wanting the IHSAA to foot the bill. More courts would see the case concerning legal fees and its appeals for years to come. Schafer had no idea the final ruling on those damages was still 20 years away. * * * For the Schafers, basketball is a family affair.Shane's Uncle Timothy, the lawyer, played on IU’s freshman team back when there was more than just the single collegiate team. His younger cousins and brother played the sport, too. Cousin Todd Schafer was the state’s leading scorer in high school basketball during the 2002-03 season. Schafer started sports young. The number 22 has covered his chest since he was 12-years-old. He chose to focus on basketball in high school, and eventually worked his way onto the highly competitive varsity team.Former Andrean Coach Bob Buscher remembers coaching Schafer, as he remembers many of the hundreds of students he has coached in his 36 years. “He was a hard worker," Buscher said. "He did what I asked him to do. He was coachable on the court.”Andrean, a Catholic high school, attracted some of the best talent from the region. Students planned their Friday and Saturday nights around basketball games, which often drew a full house that always included Schafer’s parents. A certain aura surrounded the season. “It’s Indiana basketball,” Schafer said. "It’s a brotherhood.” * * * Even now, two decades later, Schafer can’t explain why the IHSAA continued its fight against him.Current IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox inherited the case from past commissioners. In a recent interview, he said the motive behind the decades of appeals was not the question of Schafer’s eligibility. Rules were rules. “When we make decisions,” Cox said, “we have a duty and an obligation to uphold our rules.” And as a private organization with a voluntary membership, Cox pointed out, the IHSAA had every right to appeal for as long as it did. Schafer’s case about legal fees made its way through a few different judges and courts before a special judge ordered the IHSAA to pay $86,231 to the family in 2003. The IHSAA appealed the ruling, and in 2009 that appeal was denied. Schafer’s uncle kept him in the loop with each new legal motion. Schafer’s cousins — pre-teens when the case began — worked on the case in recent years as members of the family law firm. “It just didn’t make sense that they would spend all that money and resources to file appeal after appeal,” Shane Schafer said. The IHSAA appealed yet again. Then, on December 17, Randall Shepard — former chief justice on the Indiana Supreme Court — handed down a ruling for the Court of Appeals. “We are not the first appellate court to take notice of the IHSAA’s arbitrary and capricious decision-making toward the Schafers,” Shepard wrote. “Such decision-making can result in substantial harm to the individual student-athletes the rules are intended to serve.”The court sided with the Schafers and again ordered the IHSAA to pay the family — this time $139,663.Finally, the case that wouldn’t end appeared to be wrapping up, though the IHSAA still had the option to appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court. The case, Schafer holds, was a power struggle all along. In 1992 Judge Kickbush in the Jasper Circuit Court said the IHSAA’s conduct in the litigation “degenerated to a goal to determine who would own the ship and who would paddle the oars.” A September 2009 trial court opinion disapproved of the IHSAA tactics used in Schafer’s and other court cases, including suggestions that the organization was motivated to run up fees and expenses to warn parents and students against challenging a ruling. In the most recent ruling in December 2013, Shepard's opinion cited another suit brought against the IHSAA. He noted, “The importance of this case...lies in the fact that students learn at the hands of the IHSAA some of their early lessons about what constitutes fair play in decision-making. "Unfortunately, students acquainted with the IHSAA’s conduct in this case might reasonably conclude that winning at all costs is more important than fair play.” Though not immediately sure after the December ruling, the IHSAA has decided it will not appeal the case to the Indiana Supreme Court, said current Commissioner Bobby Cox. “We fought that fight, and now that fight’s in my lap, and I’ve determined it’s time to end this fight,” Cox said. “It’s time to move on with life.” * * * Schafer's two daughters, 4 and 7, don’t know about the case. And that’s how their father likes it. If they choose to play sports, he said, he wants them free of the burden and the fear he had in school. Schafer now lives in Valparaiso, just across the lake from his uncle Timothy. He has worked at the Porter County Adult Probation Office since he graduated from Ball State University and now serves as a probation officer. He often thinks about the decades his family has poured into the case. He knows most families wouldn’t have been able to continue a defense against the IHSAA.“They’ve done this to other kids in the region,” Schafer said. “I’m just lucky I had an uncle that’s a lawyer. Their families can’t afford the type of legal bills this type of thing would cost.” Why did they so feverishly pursue his case? He’ll never have an answer. “You sit here and think, 'Jeez, they could at least write an apology letter.'”He’ll always wonder, what if? What if he had played for all of his junior year? What if his family had never been burdened by the case? He escapes these questions on the basketball court, a place he hopes to frequent until his body tells him otherwise. Schafer has kept up his skills, playing regularly since his high school days. “I choose to play when I want to play,” he said, “and no one can tell me when I can’t.” He and his cousins find time for H-O-R-S-E and two-on-two in the backyard. At the Wheeler High School Field House in Valparaiso, Schafer dons his No. 22 jersey to compete in a weekend league and play pick-up games on weekdays. Even on vacations, after the children are asleep and the wife is relaxing, Schafer ventures out to find a court. The crowds are gone. The cheering exists now only in memory. But he still thirsts for the win.Stepping on the court, the old instincts take over. Beads of sweat form along his forehead. His heartbeat quickens. Dribbling the ball, he looks for his next move. Is the lane clear? Is there enough space to shoot the three? The glance toward the net. The shot. He watches and waits. This story was based on court documents and interviews with Shane Schafer, Timothy Schafer, Commissioner Bobby Cox and Schafer's former coach Bob Buscher. Follow reporter Matthew Glowicki on Twitter @mattglo.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/02/court-to-court

Mathers exhibit displays traditional 'Ojibwe' art

(02/03/14 4:30am)

The Mathers Museum opened “Ojibwe Public Art, Ostrom Private Lives” last Friday. The exhibit was organized by a group of IU graduate students.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/02/mathers-exhibit-displays-traditional-ojibwe-art

Obama misses the mark on higher education

(01/21/14 5:00am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As college students, most of us can agree that getting a college degree is important. Most of us can also agree that getting more people through college should be a major goal of United States policy. After all, the world’s most advanced countries — including Japan, Korea and Israel — have more college graduates than the U.S.In 2008, President Obama was elected, openly telling the American people that he would make America the world leader in college graduates. Five years later, we’ve slipped from 12th to 14th in the world. For the past three years, Obama has been forced to play defense, having to stop the Republican-controlled House of Representatives from slashing student aid or raising loan rates. From halting bills in the Senate to passing executive orders, Obama’s done everything possible to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, the status quo is nothing short of dismal. Since Obama can’t get a comprehensive education bill through the House, he called upon the nation’s universities to open more opportunities for low-income students. Unfortunately, the President’s request has no political or legal bite.It’s an empty request. Since no policy is in place, Obama is depending on universities to let more poor students attend college for cheap or for free. The Editorial Board believes expensive college costs are a substantial part of the quagmire that’s pulling low-income Americans even further down. We also believe the politicians in Washington, D.C., could do more for their constituents than ask for a favor really, really nicely. Currently, we face a national deficit — a lack of jobs, both for college graduates and for non-graduates. And at this point, many of us have to ask if a college degree is even worth the time or money. The best way to make college degrees worth anything is to create sustainable jobs that allow citizens of any income to better themselves. The President can ask universities to allow anyone and everyone to attend all he wants, but that’s not going to make college degrees worth anything. The Editorial Board wants the government to work to get low-income students into universities where they can study degree-demanding fields, such as chemistry, engineering or economics. We also want the government to work with states to create long-lasting, sustainable apprenticeships and job training programs. Instead of condemning people born into unfortunate circumstances to squander time away at a minimum wage job at a fast-food restaurant, we can offer them something better. Phlebotomists, construction workers and pharmaceutical assistants are all examples of jobs that are possible through job training programs. We understand that the President’s gesture was well-intended. He and his wife’s journey to Ivy League degrees is both impressive and powerful.But there isn’t a point to getting students to college if our country can’t provide them a career after the journey.— opinion@idsnews.comFollow the Editorial Board on Twitter @IDS_Opinion

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/01/obama-misses-the-mark-on-higher-education

Ind. General Assembly opens 2014 session

(01/10/14 4:14am)

____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s legislation season in Indianapolis. The state General Assembly won’t be looking at a budget this year, but there are hot issues ahead nonetheless during this “short session,” which started Tuesday and continues through March 14. Among them are a constitutional amendment reinforcing the state’s ban on same-sex marriages and an expansion to the school voucher program.Local elected representatives will be working to see the bills they think are most important enacted this session. Here’s a look at what they’re focused on.Rep. Peggy Mayfield, RWork toward lower unemployment“The No. 1 priority for, I think, everybody in this session regardless of party is jobs and the skills gap,” Mayfield said. “Jobs, regardless of the economy, is always going to be a top priority.”She said she’s hoping to see legislation try to increase training for technical skills, but many businesses have told her they’re concerned about soft skills, like punctuality and professionalism as well.Reform criminal sentencingMayfield will take on one of several bills as part of an ongoing effort to reform the state’s criminal sentencing requirements. This is a process that started several years ago, she said, and will continue to be tweaked during the session until being enacted July 1. Most notably, the new sentencing rules have six categories of felonies, rather than four, which is intended to curb sentences that are “too harsh or not harsh enough,” she said.“They broke it down even further to try and make the sentence more appropriately fit the crime.”Allow electronic insurance notificationBelieve it or not, in the year 2014, state law often specifies that insurance providers must issue notices via first-class or certified U.S. Mail.Mayfield has introduced legislation to allow customers to opt into electronic notification.“I think we’ll see that more and more, the permissive electronic commerce,” she said.Rep. Matt Pierce, DRaise the minimum wagePierce said his main concern is that wages aren’t increasing fast enough for many Indiana workers.“We have a really terrible record when it comes to wage growth,” he said. “We’re really behind the curve. We’ve lost a lot of those manufacturing jobs that not only paid high wages but had good benefits.”His solution? Increase the minimum wage from $7.25, a decision many states have made in the past year to encourage higher wages.Keep top science and technology students hereAnother way Pierce said he hopes to build higher-paying industrial and manufacturing jobs is by encouraging the state’s top 1,000 graduates in STEM fields to stay in Indiana. STEM fields are the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.He plans to support legislation that would waive the first five years of income taxes for these 1,000 top university graduates.Increase renewable energy usePierce is writing his own bill to encourage building more wind and solar power infrastructure in Indiana.“Once you get the infrastructure in place, they last for a long time and the cost of that energy doesn’t increase because the wind doesn’t arrive one day and say, ‘I’m going to charge you more to come through here,’” Pierce said.His bill would require utility companies to purchase energy from individuals who install solar panels and wind turbines. The goal is to allow people to profit from renewable energy they generate and pump more of that energy into the power grid.Sen. Mark Stoops, DExpand the Lifeline LawStoops is writing legislation to expand the protections of the Lifeline Law, which currently provides amnesty from underage drinking charges for those who call for medical help when people around them have consumed too much alcohol.He said he hopes an expanded law would also protect those under the influence of illegal drugs.“We shouldn’t have people die because other people are afraid they’ll get in trouble,” Stoops said.Make Medicaid more availableIndiana is one of the handful of states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid using funds made available by the federal Affordable Care Act.Rather than expand Medicaid, Republican Gov. Mike Pence has promoted the Healthy Indiana Plan, which he says incentivizes preventative care, but Stoops said hasn’t helped many low-income Hoosiers.“We’re looking at about 300,000 people in Indiana who are not eligible to purchase subsidized coverage on the exchange and are also not low-income enough to be eligible for Medicaid,” Stoops said.Encourage recycling statewideStoops is working on bills he hopes will require recyclables not be put in landfills and make it cheaper for individuals to recycle than to throw away trash.“In Monroe County, you pay for trash and recycling is free, and that encourages diverting recyclable materials from the landfill,” he said.He said he hopes to achieve the same effect statewide.Follow reporter Michael Auslen on Twitter @MichaelAuslen.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2014/01/ind-general-assembly-opens-2014-session

Brazilian students let loose despite society's high expectations

IU biology professor dies of leukemia

Karlijn Keijzer remembered after fatal Malaysian Airlines crash

School of Public Health creates free public health courses