The Ranger (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, April 20, 2007 Page: 5 of 31
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The Ranger • www.theranger.org
April 20, 2007 • 5
Julieann Hosey
Learning communities provide built-in support
By Monte Ashqar
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Financial aid deadline
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fast approaching
Personal responsibility needed to succeed in school
By Cristian C. Martinez
By Cristian C. Martinez
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Delia Wallis
Counselor
Students have many options to assist them
with financial aid before the deadline June 30.
Final “Where There’s a Will,
There’s an A” lecture stresses
student-teacher dialogue.
Phil Ulis
international business freshman
munication between faculty members, Wallis said.
“The LINC program is available with a lot of disciplines at this
time, but we’re hoping to make it include all majors in the near
V
J
IMS
Splash: Fire academy students. Logan Martinez and Daniel
Hannemann shoot water April 12 in Guadalupe County’s Fire Facility.
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Students must take responsibility for
their education, the co-leader of the five-
week study “Where There’s a Will —There’s
an A” said Feb. 27 at the Methodist Student
Center.
International business freshman and
intern Phil. Ulis led the last discussion of
this study on communication skills and
conflict resolution followed with comments
from David Semrad, the director of the
center.
The first part of the discussion was labeled
the communication loop, which addressed
both listening and sending messages.
“You have to notice the barriers to send-
ing your message and confront them,” Ulis
said.
The first type of listening discussed was
nonverbal listening.
“Maintaining eye contact shows respect
when you are listening," Ulis said.
“You are impacting your own learning by
how you listen in the classroom,” Semrad
added.
The other type of listening discussed was
nonverbal listening.
“If someone is complaining that their
teacher is boring, they should make a posi-
tive spin on the message and make it interest-
ing for themselves,” Ulis said.
For sending messages, Ulis talked about
“the I’s have it!” — describing how a person
I
ST
“if someone is complaining that their
teacher is boring, they should make a
positive spin on the message and make it
interesting for themselves.”
The Learning in Communities program has influenced participat-
ing students’ grade-point average very positively, Counselor Delia
Wallis said.
Wallis, who is an advocate of the program and a participant faculty
in it as well, said in the Learning in Communities faculty workshop
that when the program was implemented in May 2002, it had a lot of
success with the students and has made the study material far more
interesting.
“The idea of a learning community is to enroll the same group of
students into at least two classes that have some type of connection or
link to each other,” Wallis said, addressing a room full of participating
faculty members. “Having the same students in two of your classes
allows you to make friends, form study groups and learn in a more
relaxed atmosphere.”
The program, known as LINC, is designed to help freshmen stu-
dents who are struggling with some of their courses, Wallis said.
Wallis will be teaching PSYC 2301, General Psychology, this fall,
which is going to be linked with SDEV 0171, Strategies for Success.
“The LINC program isn’t something new here at SAC,” Wallis said.
“It’s a program that I’ve been participating in since May 2002.”
“Students go to* a history class, they learn the content, then they go
to English and then to a government class, and at the end of the day,
they don’t know how to make a connection between their classes,”
Wallis said. “They don’t know how to generalize their information future,” Wallis said.
Sophie Caldera-Castaneda, project coordinator for the teaching
academy learning communities, said, “This is a voluntary program for
students, and in order for it to work, we want to have 17 students in
each class. That’s a good number for us.”
English Professor Bill Shute said that his son goes to the University
of North Texas and that the LINC program has worked out well
there.
A list of classes that can be linked together can be found in the
summer and fall 2007 printed version of the class schedule which
will be available at the end of April and can be downloaded online at
http://www.accd.edu/sac/sacmain/schedule/default.htm.
Any student can sign up for the program, but it is designed to
help freshmen who might be or already are struggling with some of
their classes.
Some 11,634 students have received financial aid between
fall 2006 and March 27, according to information provided by
the financial aid office.
June 30 is the FAFSA deadline for the 2006-07 academic
year, therefore it is the last day that students can apply for
financial aid for the 2007 summer semesters. The financial
aid office has opened two additional locations for students
to get financial aid assistance. In addition to the lab in the
financial aid office in Room 101 of Fletcher Administration
Center, students can now get help in Room 208 of Fletcher
and in the Cyber Cafe on the second floor of Loftin Student
Center.
“We. only have three computers in the financial aid lab, so
our space was very limited,” Javier Vargas, associate director
of student financial services, said m an interview March 20.’
Work-study students are available in,these locations to
help students accept awards, complete the Free Application
for Federal Student Aid application, and access their financial
aid information on PALS. “We encourage students to bring
their FAFSA to make sure everything is correct and then send
them to the labs,” Vargas said.
Students need only a Social Security number to be able to
use these labs. “They do not need a student ID because we
log them in ourselves, and some people might be new and
never done financial aid before,” Vargas said.
For those interested in financial aid advisers who sit
down with the students, the Southside Community Education
Center, the Eastside Community Education Center, and the
Westside Community Education Center offer this kind of
assistance. “We recommend it for sit-down individual help,
which we sometimes can’t do here at SAC,” Vargas said.
More information including the hours of operation, the
location and the phone number for each center can be
found at http://www.accd.edu/district/cec/EastSide.htm.
According to information provided by the financial aid office
the hours of operation for each of the labs is posted at each
lab respectively, and they vary depending on the work-study
coverage.
and employers want’us to teach them how to do that.”
Wallis said each faculty member needs to make a community for
his or her students where they can absorb and discuss the information
they learn with each other.
LINC improves retention, retention equals dollars because fewer
students are dropping; it also improves student involvement and moti-
vation; GPA increases for the learning community classes students;
and a sense of belonging develops among the students, Wallis said.
“Students find us to be very hands off,” Wallis said. “They don’t
feel connected to the faculty or to SAC.”
As to faculty members who participate in the program, they learn
new things every day working with partners and sharing the two
classes’ information with their students, Wallis said.
For this program to work, there needs to be some sort of com-
should express his or her feelings.
“You should say ‘I feel this way’ instead of
‘you make me feel angry,”’ Ulis said.
The next part of the discussion covered
the topic of how to chose an instructor.
“How you deal with authority becomes
very important for a student,” Semrad
said.
Semrad gave tips such as researching the
instructor, showing interest in class and get-
ting to know the instructor better.
“Ask other classmates about a professor”
and “try to visit the professor’s class before
you take it.”.
He also mentioned that sitting in the
front row shows more interest in the class
and advised putting the fear of authority
behind by getting to know the instructor
better.
“Most faculty want you to succeed, and
if you succeed, it makes them look good,”
Semrad said.
The discussion concluded by having the
attendees divided into two groups, the con-
flict engagers and the conflict avoiders for an
exercise addressing conflict resolution.
The exercise was for each group to figure
out and give advice to the other group on
how to resolve conflict.
The avoiders went first telling the engag-
ers that engaging in conflict is not worth all
the wasted energy.
The engagers responded by telling the
avoiders that they should take more initiative •
in communicating and give in the first word
to begin to resolve a conflict.
“We are all different and that means that
we are going to have differences in terms of
where we want to go, what we want to do,
and how we plan a class project,” Semrad
said.
“We have to learn to work together and
be team players.”
He concluded the discussion by pointing
out the object or goal in conflict resolu-
tion.
"The object is not to be the winner or to
have it your way, but to figure out how you
can work together and make everyone win,”
Semrad said.
“Students go to a history class,
they learn the content, then they go
to English and then to government
class, and at the end of the day, they
don't know how to make a connection
between their classes. They don't know
how to generalize their information, and
employers want us to teach them how to
do that."
Si
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San Antonio College. The Ranger (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, April 20, 2007, newspaper, April 20, 2007; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1354398/m1/5/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting San Antonio College.