“If you haven’t had Professor N., you haven’t experienced true hell,” Ashley, an animal science senior who wishes her last name to remain anonymous said. “This guy is a real dick. Not only is he an egomaniac, but he is blind to students’ concerns with extremely unrealistic expectations.”

Throughout most of the history of higher education, colleges have neglected to care what students thought of their teachers’ performances. The Puritan ministers who instructed students in America’s first colleges never asked, or cared, if they were approachable enough.

Times have changed. With student evaluations, both in class and on the Internet, via Web sites such as Polyratings.com, students now have the ability to directly grade their professors. But how much should customer satisfaction affect education?

In general, Cal Poly is continuously committed to upholding a community designed to promote educational goals, according to the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities Web site.

It is the instructor’s responsibility to provide a classroom conducive to learning for all students, Adrienne Miller, coordinator of the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, said.

The most common forms of infractions and problems for student academic rights involve grades, plagiarism and meeting graduation requirements on time.

Grades
Ashley is usually a straight-A student. Throughout her academic career she has been satisfied with her professors. However, she still clearly remembers her worst academic experience during her freshmen year of college, in which she received a C.

“My teacher curved grades. This sounds great, but he did not curve each individual test, rather the entire class, so I had absolutely no idea what I was getting in the class until the very end,” she said.

On most of her tests, she scored somewhere in the middle of the class averages, which ranged between 56 and 66 percent.

“I wasn’t upset because I got a C,” she said. “But because for me as a student, I didn’t miss one lecture, took careful notes, and read all of the material for tests. To put in the time and the effort and still end up unsatisfied was the worst.”

For a general education class, the structure of the course tests was also aggravating to her.

“The tests were completely multiple choice, 50 questions on each. Most of the questions had five or six answers, and the choices ranged from ‘all of these,’ ‘none of these’ or, just to throw you off, ‘two of these,’ so you really needed to know every single detail about everything that was covered.”

When dealing with problems similar to Ashley’s, issues with grades should first be discussed directly with your professor.

If a dispute escalates, it is brought to the attention of the department chair, then the dean’s office and ultimately the Fairness Board. The Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs has the last say, informing the Fairness Board on what action, if any, has been taken.

The Fairness Board was established to hear grievances of students who believe their academic rights have been denied or violated, according to the Policies on the Rights and Responsibilities of Individuals.

The Board is comprised of one tenured or tenure-track faculty member from each college and one tenured or tenure-track member from Student Affairs, all appointed by the chair of the Academic Senate for two-year terms. Two student members are also selected by Associated Students Inc., the Fairness Board Web site states. The Board hears appeals based on the belief that the instructor has made a mistake, shown bad faith or incompetence or been unfair, according to theWeb site.

David Conn, Vice Provost for Academic Programs, leads the Academic Programs Office, whose mission it is to improve academics. With the Fairness Board, the presumption is that the faculty member is correct. The burden of proof is on the student, Conn said.

In order for a dispute to have merit when it reaches the Fairness Board, it has to be more than hearsay. It is up to the student to demonstrate, with witnesses and a testament, that he or she was treated unfairly.

Sometimes professors re-examine their grade books and see if there are errors, Debra Valencia-Laver, associate dean for the College of Liberal Arts, said.

“Academic disputes don’t often reach the Fairness Board,” Valencia-Laver said. “Maybe three or four times a quarter.”

Many students come into school with the mindset that they’ve worked hard and deserve the highest mark. To most, an A is meeting the standard requirements, not a C.

“It’s not necessarily, ‘Did you get the grade you deserve,’” said Valencia-Laver.

Academic Dishonesty
It’s as easy as copy, paste and print. With universal access to the Internet, increased stress and expectations, student plagiarism and cheating raise questions of academic integrity.

Learning to think and work independently is part of the educational process, according to the Policies on the Rights and Responsibilities of Individuals.

As a student, you are responsible for the work you turn in. However, plagiarism isn’t a black and white issue. The main problem students have with plagiarism is that they don’t know how to correctly cite their sources, Miller said.

“When people copy, cut and paste, make sure to copy the URL with the citation,” she said. “It’s like getting information from a book. You would remember the name of the book, like you should remember the URL of a Web site.”

Cal Poly’s policy with cheating and plagiarism requires students receive an “F” course grade and be prevented from further attending the course.

The instructor is obligated to place evidence of the cheating in writing before the Vice President of Student Affairs with copies to the department head of the student’s major. The Vice President of Student Affairs determines if any disciplinary action is required in addition to the failing grade. Examples of additional disciplinary actions include required counseling, special assignments and loss of membership in organizations.

The main problem students have with plagiarism is that they don’t know how to correctly cite their sources, Miller said. There are unique situations that she has dealt with regarding plagiarism of a student’s own work.

“You can actually plagiarize yourself if you turn in the same work for two classes,” she said.

To combat this, you can ask the professor if you can use the same research, even if the focus is a little different Valencia-Laver advised.

Graduation
More and more students are going through the graduation ceremony only to realize later that they haven’t actually graduated.

Wendy Spradlin, academic advisor for the College of Liberal Arts, calls this the “so sorry letter.” The main problem, she says, is that students must realize that they have to do a graduation check at least four quarters in advance, no exceptions.

“If you are graduating in fall of 2010, in fall of 2009, you must fill out your graduation requirement,” Spradlin said.

Problems that commonly arise involve community college transcripts and advance placement classes not transferring over. Often, if you put in your graduation request too late, even by a quarter, the evaluations office doesn’t have time to complete your request.

To stay up to date, you can track your graduation progress using your poly profile on the my.calpoly Web site, Spradlin said. Communication is key to avoiding academic disputes.

“The main thing is people want students to succeed but that level of responsibility comes with students putting forth their best work, something they were thoughtful about,” Valencia-Laver said.

“Diverse Issues in Higher Education” analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics to rank universities according to on-campus diversity in June 2009.
This year Cal Poly’s rankings improved in several categories: from No. 6 to No. 4 in agriculture degrees awarded to Hispanics, from No. 47 to No. 36 in computer and information sciences degrees awarded to Asian Americans and from No. 79 to No. 78 in all degrees awarded to Hispanics.

It also ranked for the first time as:
No. 5 in architecture degrees awarded to all minorities
No. 5 in architecture degrees awarded to Asian Americans and Hispanics
No. 29 in mathematics and statistics degrees awarded to Hispanics
No. 37 in agriculture degrees awarded to African Americans

But the magazine worsened the school’s rankings in five areas:
No. 5 to No. 6 in agriculture degrees awarded to Asian Americans
No. 9 to No. 12 in engineering degrees awarded to minorities
No. 12 to No. 14 in engineering degrees awarded to Asian Americans
No. 9 to No. 19 in engineering degrees awarded to American Indians
No. 50 to No. 53 in degrees awarded to Asian Americans

The CSU system “prides itself on creating access to higher education,” said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed in a press release. “Our trustees, presidents, faculty, staff and students have worked to create welcoming and inclusive campuses – resulting in a university system that reflects the rich diversity of the state of California.”
But Cal Poly doesn’t come close to matching California’s diversity.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2007 that African Americans made up 6.7 percent of the California population, compared to only 1.1 percent of Cal Poly undergraduates, according to a fact sheet updated in July 2009 on the CSU Mentor Web site.
36.2 percent of Californians were of Hispanic or Latino origin in 2007, compared to 11.4 percent of Cal Poly undergraduates in 2009.

I attended a homogeneous high school; about 10 percent of my graduating class came to Cal Poly, so it wasn’t a big change when I moved to San Luis Obispo, where 65.2 percent of the undergraduate population is white, according to CSU Mentor.

Have you found that your classes are diverse? Does it depend on your major or year? Should Cal Poly be concerned about racial diversity on campus and if so, what should the school do?

Ryan Chartrand

The Information Technology Service Department is making changes to the way students using laptops can access the Internet on campus for the fall quarter.

Since Sept. 9, Cal Poly students have been able to easily access wireless networks throughout campus for the first time without having to register laptops through the ITS office.

“From now on, faculty and students can conveniently use the Internet on campus by simply entering in their student information and password when they access their Web browser,” said Johanna Madjedi director of Communications and Computer Services.

In the past, students had to bring their laptops to the ITS office in building 14 in order to register for internet access through both on-campus local area networks (LAN) and Wi-Fi hot spots (for a complete list of wireless hot spots visit www.mobilecomputing.calpoly.edu).

All that is required now is the submission of a student ID and password through a portal that automatically appears when an Internet browser is opened within the campus network. Only registered students and faculty are eligible to access the networks.

The registration changes are designed for student and faculty convenience, and after successful deployment throughout the student dormitories last year, ITS feels confident that the alterations will be met with great reception.

But without prior inspections of laptops, the on-campus networks will run the heightened risk of viruses via infected laptops that could corrupt or even crash other computers connected to the networks.

However, Madjedi said that ITS is well aware of the risk and that the new registration alterations are part of a dual-phase process that would ensure easy accessibility and protection from viruses.

“The second phase of the registration changes includes the scanning of laptops to ensure that they have a suitable, up-to-date anti-virus program,” Madjedi said.

Madjedi also said students who do not have the required anti-virus software will be automatically directed to a Cal Poly portal where they can download free software. Internet access will be otherwise denied to avoid the risk of unprotected laptops from infecting the networks.

However, the launch of the second phase is yet undetermined at this point, but students will be encouraged through the access portal to install or update anti-virus software to ensure that the networks remain free of viruses during the available window, Madjedi said.

Patrick Trautfield

I have this itch under my skin that I can’t scratch, and it’s only getting worse now that fall quarter is here. What the hell is this nuisance that’s making me feel like I’ve got a million ants dancing all over my skin and has my heart beating so fast it could out-rev a sports car?

I’ll call it “quarteritis.”

It’s the feeling I get before every quarter at Cal Poly; ever since I made the jump from 16-week semesters, I haven’t really given my study habits the fine tuning to keep a comfortable pace with these 10-week quarters. In turn, I’ve developed the nasty habit of procrastination, and it’s with the return of the fall quarter that this habit is rising back to the surface after a summer-long dormancy.

Pulling double all-nighters to put together a half-hour presentation while learning Power Point because you have absolutely zero experience with the program? Done it. Waiting until the last 24 hours to start gathering over 20 sources for a 15-page research paper? Done and done, and I’ll do it again.

Procrastination may seem like an irresponsible and reckless study tactic destined to fail, but it’s the only successful style I can employ to guarantee satisfactory results and personal triumph – and I elicit this anxiety-evoking behavior deliberately and liberally.

In truth, I’ve always been a procrastinator – I swear it’s genetic. I’ve been quite comfortable with the “recognition” that I am a procrastinator because this style works best for me, but I’m certainly not riding high upon cloud nine because of it. Procrastination is one hell of a dangerous road to travel and suitable only for the strong willed (or stubbornly arrogant).

To begin with, the downside to being a habitual last-minute man is the anvil-sized heap of anxiety it can put on your shoulders. No matter how many times you can successfully pull off a research paper or a presentation with less than a night’s work, the fear of failure is a heavy burden to carry -you never know what true obstacles are until you have less than one sunrise to hurdle them.

The worst part is you may never be able to overcome them with the ridiculously short amount of time you’ve naively set aside for academics.

However, if prevailing over high-anxiety situations is your forte, then it doesn’t get any more killer than overcoming an assignment with little time to spare.

It’s the high anxiety hole of a situation that I stubbornly drop myself into that gets me motivated to tackle just about anything professors can throw at me. I have discovered through years of procrastinating behavior that I live to overcome pressure situations. I am what you would call an “adrenaline junky.” I do it just for kicks.

Truly, the upside to being a procrastinator is the monumental satisfaction I feel after finishing a term paper with minutes to spare and finding out the following week that my poorly-timed efforts produced rich results.

Like “extreme” sports and fast cars, procrastination is just another tool I utilize for that rush – a sure-fire way to spice up your life and make academics that much more interesting.

However, be warned: Procrastination takes years of practice to master its most beneficial results and I only use it because it hasn’t failed me yet. You certainly have to exhibit nerves of steel and as I’ve mentioned, a strong, even arrogant, will to become a master procrastinator. Otherwise, your poorly-timed efforts are going to crumble the foundations of your Cal Poly aspirations.

Rationally, it’s best not to employ this nasty habit, but if you have enough brazen, enough gull, and an iron-clad stomach that handles the abuses of shot-gunning a Red Bull, you can achieve just about anything that comes your way, even if a deadline is only a stone’s throw away.

Patrick Trautfield

Perched up in his office on the fourth floor of the Administration building, Cal Poly President Warren Baker’s view overlooks much of the campus. As students bustle through their day-by-day activities, here is the man at the heart of the institution. But after 28 years of overseeing every sect of the university, his life now extends well beyond the fourth floor and he took the time to speak with the Mustang Daily about what it’s like to be in his shoes.

Mustang Daily: What attracted you to Cal Poly in the first place?

President Baker: No one has asked me that question in a long time. I was attracted to Cal Poly primarily because of the philosophy of education and the opportunity to work at a university that was in transition.

MD: What kind of transition was it going through at the time?

PB: Cal Poly was growing and it had a modest plan. New programs were something that I felt would be appropriate as we had to look at revising the master plan for the university. So all of that provided an opportunity to be more than a caretaker over a state university – that’s not going to change much.

MD: Do you think the plan has been completed at this point?

PB: It’s well on its way. We added seven programs in liberal arts. When I arrived here, we didn’t have a philosophy major, we did not have majors in languages, we didn’t have a music major or a major in theater and dance. So over a period of time, the faculty developed proposals and we were able to attract majors and strengthen the overall education program as well.

MD: What are your day-to-day responsibilities?

PB: Well, it’s pretty varied -sometimes I describe it as having several different jobs. The best way to carve it up is that I have responsibilities as a president in the CSU system to help shape the CSU policies, so I spend a good deal of time working on commissions and committees for the CSU system.

Then, with respect to the campus, I ultimately have responsibility for the programs in the university and I do that mainly by delegating responsibility through the colleges and the deans. I review all of the promotion and tenure decisions of the university as well, internally, and make the final decisions on the allocation of the budget based upon the academic plans and the strategic plan of the university.

And thirdly, I spend a good deal of my time trying to raise private money. When I came here, I started a development program that we launched, a major capital campaign which ended about a year ago. So the effort associated with cultivating and meeting donors and working on getting proposals put together takes up some of my time.

And the fourth area would be time I spend with the students. The only reason we’re here is for the well-being of the students. I meet with student leadership but I look for opportunities to meet informally with groups of students, like Poly Reps. I try to schedule as much time as I can, but of course being off-campus, raising private funds and government relations (he trails off).

MD: What do you think needs improvement at Cal Poly?

PB: I think clearly we need to continue to improve our physical facilities. The highest priority on my list right now is to replace our physical science facilities. Our support programs like engineering and agriculture and architecture go through the sciences, and our facilities are pretty old. The (spider) building is not very adaptable to new teaching techniques and the equipment that we need is also a tremendous waste of space on campus because it’s a one-story building that spreads out. It’s huge and inefficient and out of date. So that’s the highest priority but that’s probably the best example of our continuing drive to improve facilities and teaching facilities.

MD: Is there a plan in the works for the spider building?

PB: Yes, in fact in this year’s budget we have money to begin the process and it’s on the list of projects to be funded so over the next three years. We will be receiving state funding of up to about $100 million for the facility and we’re in the process of raising an additional $22 million in private money for it. So it’s going to be a reality – it’s just a lot of hard work.

MD: Why don’t you live in the president’s house on campus?

PB: It’s really pretty simple. I lived there for 25 years and there’s no real reason for me to live there. I felt we could probably use the space for university purposes more than we did – although while we lived there, we used it an awful lot for university functions – but it’s used quite a bit more now. We’re able to remodel it for handicapped access now and so we hold a lot of small meetings, hosting university guests, and student and university organizations use it. So it gets a lot of use.

MD: Is it strange having meetings in your old house?

PB: Well, I know every nook and cranny! (laughs) I have to say, by and large, living there, the students respected our privacy but there is something that I did realize – and I didn’t realize it until I moved out – but there is a continual level of tension and stress and anxiety that exists because we were on the job 24 hours a day every day. You couldn’t take a day off and kick around at home. So it was certainly different when I moved off campus. I think that people don’t realize they need to get away from the job – it took me 25 years to get to that point.

Our children all grew up here, our youngest son was 2 years old when we moved there and we have four children – and our oldest daughter was 16. So they grew up there and all our grandchildren had Christmas there for 15 to 20 years.

MD: What did your children think of growing up on a university campus when they were so young?

PB: I think there were parts they liked and there were parts that were difficult for them. The aspect of living in a glass house where they’re under scrutiny all the time was difficult for them from time to time. The other fact is that you didn’t live in a neighborhood so you didn’t have friends who lived in the neighborhood – when you went around the campus, it’s all students so it was not like living in a family neighborhood.

MD: When students say that they don’t know their university president, how do you address that?

PB: As I said, I try as often as I can. It is difficult to be as visible as people want you to be when so much of what I do takes me away from the campus and when I get back I generally have a calendar that’s filled. . I used to have open office hours, but no one came. (laughs) So we stopped doing it. I don’t know why. . It’s not like a small liberal arts college where the president can have fireside chats with the students. In higher education today, in a public system like the CSU system, there are lots of demands on your time and it is more and more difficult to stay in touch on a real basis with students.

MD: If students wanted you to have the same office hours again, would you do it?

PB: Sure.

MD: What are some of your best memories from college?

PB: You think all of your friends are your high school classmates, but when you get to college, you really learn that you make lifelong friendships in college. That’s the thing that I think I remember the most is the friends that I made and the kind of things that we were involved in – the athletic programs, the late hours. I went to Notre Dame and it was quite a different institution at that time than it is now – there were no women at the university when I was there. As an all-male campus and it was rather strictly run. My experience was quite different than what students have here.

MD: How far off is retirement?

PB: Well I’m getting old. I would say sometime in the next few years, whether it’s two years or three years, I really don’t have any definite plans. I know that the time will be right soon. There are a couple things that I just want to make sure get done – the science building. I’d like to be sure we have it secured because I think that’s so important to Cal Poly. I think we’re right at the stage now where we’re updating the master plan for the university and just getting that on track – not necessarily completing it because that tends to be a dynamic process that goes on for several years – but being sure that the university is thinking about the future.

Ryan Chartrand

Congratulations to you Cal Poly students who will finally graduate this year. We finally made it. We won’t have to worry now about our parents asking how much longer, but rather reiterating how our room back home has been changed into something completely different and we are not welcome anymore.

But this story isn’t just for anyone who will be graduating some time in 2007 – this is for those who decided four years wasn’t enough. Yes, this goes out to all you fifth years and sixth years and seventh.OK what the hell are you seventh years still doing in school?

It is for you college students who have been able to milk out every class at Poly. This includes taking bowling three times and if taken again, you won’t get credit. We have come to realize graduating in four years is like leaving the party at 9 p.m.

And rightly so. What do we have to look forward to in the real world? While in college, you may have been considered a drinking champion by winning almost every game of Beirut or King’s Cup, but do you know what they call people like that outside of college? Yeah. Alcoholics.

But we still have this final year to crystallize our college experience. If you’re that lazy student who’s about to bum a house for a few months or if you actually can graduate in fall but want to take 16 units over three quarters, I salute you and your skills at persistent procrastination. Your college skills have reached their peak and I can only recommend teaching your ways to the lower classes.

We are the masters of switching majors every two quarters. Our parents must have had all the patience in the world when we told them we were switching from engineering to psychology. But the only thing better than our academic background is our ability to register for classes. Back when we had POWER, we might have been the kids who registered an hour after our assigned time because we were too caught up on all the crazy classes we found (yeah, I took People, Pests and Plagues and loved it).

This will be it for us. We will be making that move into the real world in one year and starting real life jobs, or like the majority of us, sleeping on our parents’ couch watching the Price is Right. So my only advice would be to enjoy this year for all that it is. Go out every Tuesday night for Pint Night and go to Farmers’ Market on Thursdays to enjoy the atmosphere, because when this year is over, the college town of San Luis Obispo will not be the same as your hometown, wherever you are from.