The Pine Log

              CMYK
Thursday, February 17, 2011
TODAY
H 72 L 58
The
FRIDAY
H 70 L 54
SATURDAY
H 71 L 57
Volume 90
Issue 6
Next Publication:
Monday, February 21, 2011
Visit us online at
www.thepinelog.com
The Independent Voice of Stephen F. Austin State University
Page 4
.
Page 6
PINE LOG
Lumberjacks
take on Texas
State this
Saturday
Between oil
and revolution
in the Arab
world By Liliana Monsivais
CONTRIBTING WRITER
Since the Spring Semester of
2008 University personnel have
been working on the Quality
Enhancement Plan (QE,P) titled
Make an Impact @ SFA!. The ini-tiative
is designed to improve stu-dent’s
higher order thinking skills
and overall academic success.
Higher order thinking skills the QEP
is intended to advance are analysis,
synthesis, and evaluation; the plan
is to incorporate these skills into
lower and junior level courses for
incoming freshmen.
Dr. James O. Standley, chair of
the steering committee, said he is
“very excited” about this program,
and he believes it will be “well re-ceived
by the students.”
The steering committee is com-posed
of 75 faculty and staff mem-bers
and more than 50 students.
Higher order thinking (HOT) re-fers
to thinking beyond just the
facts. A number of incoming stu-dents
were not challenged to think
critically during their high school
years, and SFA wants to change
that. At a college level students
must be able to understand facts,
analyze them and apply them to
real life situations, as this allows
them to apply such thinking into
decision-making throughout their
lifetime.
The Quality Enhancement Plan
is the result of campus-wide plan-ning
and community involvement.
Many groups including faculty,
staff, students and alumni partici-pated
in the selection of the topic,
which is HOT. The fact that stu-dents
were involved in the decision
making and outlining of this plan
reiterates the promise that the pro-gram
will be tailored to the specific
needs of the student population,
and that it will receive great ac-claim
as students will want to par-ticipate
and support the program
entirely.
The program’s primary goals are
1)to improve higher order think-ing
skills by incorporating high im-pact
practices into targeted under-graduate
classes, and 2) to improve
institutional outcomes related to
student academic success, student
persistence, and higher engage-ment.
The program is designed to
accomplish these goals by utiliz-ing
Higher Impact Practices, to im-prove
HOT; these are collaborative
assignments and projects, men-tored
undergraduate research and
career-specific learning. Students
will begin to get involved with this
plan as soon as they step foot into
the institution early their freshman
year, as in SFA101 and three other
required courses.
An issue that the institution has
been facing is having a low re-tention
rate. That means that 65
percent of students leave SFA be-fore
they reach the end of their
sophomore year for various rea-sons.
If the University is successful
in achieving student persistence ,
the overall success of the institute
will improve.
High Impact programs will in-crease
student engagement and
persistence to graduate, and will
raise overall grades. The program
is campus wide, so there will be
no fragmenting of the campus into
groups of students who get to take
part in the program and those who
were not involved.
The program outline states that
the plan is designed to impact the
campus culture at SFA by building
interest and aptitude among facul-ty
and staff to infuse both curricu-lar
and cocurricular programs with
the attributes that put the “impact”
in high-impact programs.
‘Impact’ program to target specific needs of students
Meet Mr. Greek 2011
Kyle Larson rides a scooter on-stage as part of the talent portion of the Mr. Greek 2011
Competition held by Driving Jacks in the Grand Ballroom of the BPSC Wednesday night.
Larson would go on to win both Mr. Greek and crowd favorite. Jerren Dexter was the runner-up
at the competition.
THOMAS MOTYKA/THE PINE LOG
SFA mourns loss of student
By Jonathan Garris
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Friends and family are mourning the
loss of Christopher Lamb, a 22 year old ac-counting
student from Humble, who died
over the weekend.
According to a police report, officers
found Lamb deceased in the living room of
a residence in the 1500 block of Leita Lane.
Lamb had attended a party at the residence
and had spent the night, falling asleep in a
chair, according to the report.
When residents awoke the next morn-ing
at around 8 a.m., Lamb was found de-ceased.
Police found no signs of foul play,
however an autopsy has been ordered. An
official cause of death will be ruled by a
judge when completed.
According to the Daily Sentinel, Lamb
was set to graduate in May and planned
on attending the University of Houston to
get his MBA and become a certified public
accountant.
By Jessica Layfield
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The SFA College of Business has invited
an SFA alumnae to speak about entrepre-neurship
at 2 p.m. Thursday in the College
of Business Auditorium, Room 133.
Dianna Novy Lee graduated from SFA in
1992 with a marketing degree. A native of
Ennis, Texas, her first job led her to meet-ing
her husband, Adam Lee.
In 1994, Lee and her husband, Adam
Lee, followed their dream and opened up a
winery in California.
Their label, Siduri Wines, produces ex-clusively
Pinot Noir and has received na-tional
attention from wine critiques in
such magazines as Savor WineCountry
Magazine and The Wine Advocate.
Dianna Lee also formed Novy Family
Winery in 1998, which was started with
Dianna’s family still residing in Texas.
According to a press release, Siduri
Wines now offers more than 25 different
Pinor wines each year and is considered as
having the largest Pinot Noir focus of any
California Winery. They do not, however,
own any vineyards.
According to the release, all fruit is pur-chased
from growers with which Dianna
and Adam work together in making farm-ing
decisions.
Lee will be speaking about her experi-ences
as an entrepreneur, as well as offer-ing
tips on the etiquette of drinking, tast-ing
and serving wines. For more informa-tion,
please contact Dr. Phil Setz with the
College of Business at (936) 468-4103.
jlayfield@thepinelog.com
SFA alumna to speak about wine entrepreneurship
As many as 16 hands will be playing pia-nos
simultaneously during the Stephen F.
Austin State University School of Music’s
piano scholarship fund-raiser concert at 7:30
p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26, in Cole Concert Hall.
“Pianists! Pianists! Pianists!” will fea-ture
faculty of the School of Music and its
Music Preparatory Division: Mario Ajero, Mary
Cooper, James Faucett, Geneva Fung, Ping-Ting
Lan, Gene H. Moon, Andrew Parr, Ron Petti,
James Pitts, Jean Roberts, John Noel Roberts
and Shirley Watterston. Moon will also serve as
master of ceremonies and conductor.
“Throughout the evening, the performers
will play up to five grand pianos simultane-ously,
with as many as eight pianists at once,”
Parr explained. “The audience will be famil-iar
with many of the pieces, such as ‘The
William Tell Overture’ and the overture to
‘The Barber of Seville. The centerpiece of the
program, J.S. Bach’s “Concerto in C Major for
Three Pianos,” will feature Parr, Jean Roberts
and John Noel Roberts, along with music
faculty and student members of the Piney
Woods Camerata.
Proceeds from the biennial benefit con-cert
are used to offer scholarships to SFA
piano majors each year
“Especially in these economic times there
is a great need to support student schol-arships,”
Parr explained. “Good academic
standing will assure an entering student a
substantial scholarship, but often it is the
music talent scholarship from the School
of Music that will be the deciding factor for
a student coming to SFA to study. We need
these scholarships to help attract talented
pianists to our campus.”
Regular tickets are $30 for adults and
$15 for seniors. Students are admitted free.
Patron tickets, which are available at several
levels, include seats for up to 10 people and
admission to a post-concert reception.
For tickets or more information, please
call the Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-
6407 or (888) 240-ARTS. Cole Concert Hall is
located in the Wright Music Building, 2210
Alumni Dr.
SFA to host piano scholarship fund-raising concert