CAMP provides support for migrant students

During his high school years, Freshman Ricardo Alvarado did not have the most conventional summer job.

Rather than passing the time working in the fast food or retail industries like many high school students, Alvarado and his family left their home in the small agricultural town of Edcouch, Texas each summer to pick berries on a Utah farm.

While the pay for this work was helpful for the family, it was not enough to secure a college future for Alvarado.

However, the College Assistance Migrant Program at St. Edward’s University offered financial support for this endeavor, and Alvarado said he is grateful for it.

“I wouldn’t have been able to pay to go here, so the CAMP program really helped me out,” Alvarado said. “It got me where I am today.”

CAMP has been providing migrant farm workers and their children with financial support at St. Edward’s for 37 years.

Brought to the university in 1972, the federally funded program provides annual college assistance for roughly 2,000 first year undergraduates nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

St. Edward’s University’s CAMP Coordinator, Linda Valdez said there are 35 freshman CAMP scholars, and approximately 98 upperclassman CAMP scholars currently enrolled at St. Edward’s.

St. Edward's is one of 10 universities in the state providing financial assistance to CAMP students.

This year, St. Edward’s was awarded more than $2 million from the U.S. Department of Education to help continue the program. Valdez said the funds are to be dispersed over the next five years, ensuring that more CAMP students will have the opportunity to study at St. Edward’s in the coming years.

While Alvarado said that finding financial support is the largest hurdle in deciding to pursue a college career, CAMP provides a variety of additional support.

Freshman CAMP student Esteban Balboa said he meets with his upperclassman CAMP mentor weekly, and his academic advisor monthly, to talk about his academic progress. All of the CAMP students also get together monthly to discuss these issues as a group.

It is a process that began before the students ever stepped foot in the classroom.

CAMP participants were offered the opportunity to come for a weeklong orientation session over the summer for help with study skills and academic support. Students were able to work with professors one-on-one in order to gauge their preparedness for classes at St. Edward’s. The sessions aimed to educate on a wide scope of collegiate subjects, but were focused heavily on math and the English language.

While Alvarado is proficient in English, he still found the sessions to be extremely helpful. He said that the knowledge he gained over the summer has really helped him in his classes this year.

To further ease the transition to college life, the CAMP students arrived on campus for the start of the school year another week earlier for “enlightenment week” activities.

“It was just for us to get to know each other,” Balboa said. “So that when we started school, we wouldn’t be by ourselves coming into our new environment.”

Balboa’s decision to study at St. Edward’s was twofold. He was first introduced to the university on a school visit during his sophomore year of high school. He liked the small feel of St. Edward’s, but the CAMP program, and the funding it would promise also attracted him.

Balboa grew up in Nebraska, but moved to Mission, Texas shortly before he began high school. However, they still return to Nebraska each summer to work in meat packing facilities. While Balboa has not worked in the plants himself, he has sometimes worked on farms for weeks at a time during the summer months in order to assist friends and earn extra money.

Some of the CAMP students and their parents will continue to work in the agricultural industry during summers and holidays.

While Alvarado’s parents have presently managed to find higher paying jobs in their hometown, he may still return to Utah this summer. Alvarado’s decision is not solely influenced by the work. Rather, he would like to return to spend time with family and friends.

Nestled in the Rio Grande Valley, the Hidalgo County town of Edcouch does not have the infrastructure to support year-round employment for its roughly 4,600 residents.

So, in summer months, when the arid climate grows too warm to support many of the regions crops, residents find temporary homes throughout the country picking seasonal fruits and vegetables. Utah berry farms are a popular choice, and much of Alvarado’s extended family makes the yearly journey there.

And while some CAMP students are content to return to agricultural work during the summers, they know that their degrees, which range across the university’s areas of study, will help them to pursue a variety of careers.

And Balboa said he is thankful for that opportunity and appreciates the program.
“It’s a very good program,” he said. “It helps you a lot, financially, yeah, but it’s also like an extra support system.”

Story # 3 Outline

St. Edward’s University touts its commitment to 100 percent “smart classrooms.” All classrooms are supposed to include: wired and wireless Internet access, a computer and DVD player with an integrated control system, a projector, amplified sound, laptop input accessibility, an 84 inch display screen and a wireless mouse.

For this story I will speak with employees from information technology, faculty and students alike to determine if the university is living up to its commitment. I will attempt to gain the opinions of my interview subjects about how beneficial they find classrooms to be.
To gain a larger sample, I will find out how our technology compares with other universities by questioning faculty about St. Edward’s vs. other institutions they have taught at, speak to transfer students about how SEU compares to their former institutions, and seek outside research through the web and solicit interviews by phone to find out what other universities are doing firsthand.


I will attempt to explore the issue thoroughly, and gain answers to the following questions:
-Where does the technology fee go?
-Is the spread of technology always even?
-Is it reliable?
-Have professors been trained to use it properly?
-How are students being trained to use it properly?
-How do other Universities compare?
-Are students satisfied with the level of technological integration in the classroom?
-What are the amenities like out of the classroom in study rooms, residence halls, etc?
-What are some of the most common malfunctions or concerns?
-How often is the equipment updated?
-How does our Internet service work, and what is the wireless like throughout campus?
-What are some ways that people have taken creative advantage of the amenities?
-In an increasingly technological age, can the students be more knowledgeable about the classroom technology than the instructors?



Multimedia Budget:

Photo; A photo of a professor or a group of students presenting using the classroom amenities.
Video: A video of students on campus engaging with different kinds of technology, integrate commentary from the students about how technology in the classroom fits with the technology they utilize in the outside lives.
Data: An interactive chart comparing St. Edward’s with benchmark schools in terms of the technology available and the amount of money spent through technology fee, etc.

Chronicle news editor speaks of challenges, progress

The news editor of the Austin Chronicle highlighted the history of weekly alternative newspapers in America, and described the challenges they face in both an online era, and a time of economic hardship, when he spoke before an audience at St. Edward’s University Thursday.

Michael King has been at the Chronicle since 2000, and has witnessed the paper’s online evolution firsthand.

He said that nowadays, most people live online, and there is always a push to be fast and first.
But King said that is not his personal mentality.

“I’m old school, I’d rather get it right than get it fast,” King said. “And, I’m afraid I’m a dinosaur for that.”

The Chronicle’s website is updated frequently, and features blogs, breaking news, multimedia and a city guide among its content.

And while the Chronicle has been on the web in at least an infant form since the late 90’s, King said, still, “We’re making this up as we go along.”

The Chronicle has managed to stay afloat since 1981 by operating with a local focus.

King said they do not have the resources to cover all national and international news, so they do not pretend to.

“I tell my writers, “think globally, write locally,” and that’s what we do,” he said.

The Chronicle tends to focus on Austin-Travis county, and some of the outlying towns in central Texas, where it faces little competition in the weekly independent news market.

“The chronicle has the advantage, and the disadvantage, of being the only island in the big sea of Texas,” king said.

He prides himself on providing, “not simply the news, but the news with an edge.”

The explosion of online media is one of the factors that has contributed to the financial hardships of print newspapers, and King said nobody has quite figured out how to make money from online journalism.

Once reliant on classified advertisements to bring in a portion of the paper’s revenue stream, websites like Craigslist have made the area unprofitable.

King said that the Chronicle’s revenue has not decreased across the board, rather it is flat, while expenses keep going up.

“I haven’t had a freelance budget for nearly a year,” he said.

And King does not see this changing anytime in the near future.

“We ride like everybody on the Texas economy,” he said. “Texas went into the recession a little later. We’re probably going to come out of it a little later.”

King said this predicament reminds him of the state of journalism in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when he was editor of “The Spectator,” an underground student newspaper at Indian University.

The alternative, mostly culture-driven publication seemed to make a splash in the community, but was not financially sustainable.

“For the first ten years, they couldn’t make ends meet,” he said.

The paper had trouble with payroll, and the staff was forced to switch printers on a few occasions because the companies did not approve of the publication’s content.

“If you’re going to build institutions, that means your going to have to make money of out of it,” King said.

And the Chronicle, as well as other traditional new outlets, are now struggling to continue doing just that.

Survey suggests college women at risk of sexual assualt

College women are at a greater risk for rape and sexual assault, according to a report released today.

The survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, found that approximately 3 percent of college-aged women experience a completed or attempted rape during a given college year.

The findings suggest that in one school year, on a campus with approximately 10,000 females in the student body, 350 could potentially be raped.

This finding could have serious policy implications for college administrators, and was prompted by the rising fear that colleges are not ivory towers, but rather hotbeds for criminal activity, according to the report's authors.

The majority of attempted rapes, sexual contacts, and threatened victimizations occurred on campus, often in the victim's residency, but the study also showed bars, dance clubs, nightclubs and work settings to be known locations.

According to the research findings, about nine out of ten victims were assaulted by someone they already knew, most often by a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, classmate, friend acquaintance or coworker.

However, some victims, like Smartypants University Junior Jenny Jones, met their assailant in a public place and were coerced or drugged into moving to another location.

Jones met her alleged assailant during her freshmen year, at a bar on Sixth street.

"He seemed like such a great guy," Jones said. "He bought me a beer and we talked about college."

However, her night on the town soon turned into a nightmare.

"I let him give me a ride home and I don't remember much after that," she said. "It feels like one minute we were talking in this bar and then I woke up in his apartment. I realized what happened and I confronted him, but he just laughed."

Though the survey did not gather statistics on how often alcohol is present during attacks, Dr. William Serious, head of health services at Smartypants University, said that there are risks in a situation where alcohol is present, even when amongst friends.

"Young women are vulnerable in bars and other situations where alcohol is flowing," he said.

Serious said that the students should pay particular attention to their surroundings and be careful about accepting drinks from strangers.

Survey results were conducted over the phone. A randomly selected, national sample of more than four thousand women attending both two and four-year colleges were questioned.

The report, titled "The Sexual Victimization of College Women," was federally funded, and was conducted by University of Cincinnati professor Bonnie Fisher, along with her associates Francis Cullen and Micheal Turner.