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101, No. 170 (6 pages)
Established in 1893
Tuesday • July 11, 1995
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Brushy Creek residents
fight research complex
he Animal Science
'reek residents fear
Mike Friend, The Battalion
Beef Center is located on FM 60 adjacent to the Brazos River. Brushy
further development may cause water contamination and air pollution.
Faculty Senate
leas Group proposes adding credit
hours to education certification
□ Residents look to raise
an additional $2,000 to
file an injunction against
the University.
By Tara Wilkinson
The Battalion
Brushy Creek residents have
planned fundraisers to pay for an
injunction against the building of
Texas A&M’s Animal Science
Teaching, Research and Extension
Complex.
Residents will hold a garage sale
July 29 and a barbecue August 26.
Thirty-five members of Residents
Opposed to Pigs and Livestock
raised $3000 last month toward an
injunction against the University’s
plans to build the 1,600-animal
teaching and research complex in
Brushy Creek because they are con
cerned about water contamination
and air pollution.
The cost of filing an injunction is
$5,000. If a judge decides the in
junction merits a hearing, resi
dents estimate legal costs could
reach $15,000.
Dr. Ruth Schaffer, Texas A&M
professor emeritus of sociology and
resident of Brushy Creek, said all
money raised from a garage sale and
barbecue will be used in the fight
against the building of the complex.
Grover Hankins, professor at
Texas Southern University’s Thur-
good Marshall School of Law, is pro
viding legal counsel to the Brushy
Creek residents.
“We would like to negotiate a rea
sonable settlement between the Uni
versity and Brushy Creek resi
dents,” he said.
Residents want University offi
cials to prove it is safe to build the
animal complex in Brushy Creek,
Hankins said, or agree not to build.
“If we seek an injunction, I’m
sure a judge would consider it,”
Hankins said. “The community has
been encroached upon because of a
permitting process that is ruthless.”
Hankins said University activity
in Brushy Creek, including an oper
ating Beef Industry Center, already
has left deep wells and sand mines
that “look like the Grand Canyon.”
Although Brushy Creek residents
are concerned about the additional
mess and heavy traffic the complex
would bring to the area, they said a
See Complex, Page 6
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>llege
□ Changes must be ap
proved by Dr. Ray Bowen
and the Commission on
Teaching Standards
By Katherine Arnold
The Battalion
The Faculty Senate recom
mended changes in the secondary
education teacher certification
program yesterday, which would
give students more experience for
teaching in a changing society.
The changes involve redesign
ing the required courses for certifi
cation, changing the prefixes and
course descriptions on five 400-lev-
el teacher education classes, and
changing the course credit for stu
dent teaching from 12 hours to
pine-12 hours.
Overall, three credit hours
have been added to the current
course requirements.
Stan Carpenter, a faculty sen
ator for the College of Education,
said the changes will help the ed
ucation system adapt to a chang
ing society.
“We have to develop our cur
riculum in ways different from
other colleges,” Carpenter said.
“It’s a new ball game in education,
and we need to train our teachers
in different ways.”
William Peters, professor of ed
ucation, said the reforms in
teacher certification came after
three years of deliberation.
“We have worked with each of
the academic departments, faculty
members and secondary education
teachers to come up with this
plan,” he said. “We have a good
program now, but this program
will be the only one of its nature in
the state.”
The program
is outlined in
four phases. In
the first phase,
students seek
ing teacher cer
tification be
come familiar
with working
with adolescents
by working with
youth groups. In
the second
phase, students
learn about teaching in today’s so
ciety.
The last two phases involve de
veloping problem-solving and deci
sion-making skills to devise meth
ods to meet the educational de
mands of society.
The new course outline will in
volve much more work in the field,
Peters said. Students will begin
working with adolescents as early
as their freshman year.
Diane Kaplan, deputy speaker
of the Senate, said the reforms
Bowen
will create a better balance in the
certification process.
“We are trying to provide a bet
ter balance between becoming an
expert in the subject material and
helping future teachers be able to
communicate and interact with
their students,” she said.
The reforms now must be ap
proved by Dr. Ray Bowen, Texas
A&M president. The plan will also
be considered Thursday by the
Commission on Teaching Stan
dards, the state agency that must
approve the plan.
The Faculty Senate approved
the following other actions for
Bowen’s approval.
• Creating eight new graduate
courses.
• Creating one new undergrad
uate course.
• Changing the Genetics 320
course name from Human Genet
ics to Biomedical Genetics, and
changing the course description to
focus on genetics as applied to bio
medical science.
• Changing the Vocational Edu
cation Program within the Depart
ment of Educational Psychology to
Career Development Education.
• Changing the name for the
Department of Marine Engineer
ing to Department of Marine Engi
neering Technology.
• Revising the criteria for
tenure and promotion considera
tion for faculty members.
percent
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Texas Legislature grants A&M s
College of Medicine $ 1 million
□ Funds will be used to increase
the college's yearly enrollment, al
lowing more students to train for
family medicine.
By Javier Hinojosa
The Batt alion
A $1 million grant from the Texas Legislature
will allow the Texas A&M College of Medicine to
increase the college’s yearly student enrollment
and expand the Texas A&M Health Science Center
in Temple.
The current size of each class is 48 students.
Over the next four years, the college will admit
freshmen classes of 64 students.
Enrollment in the College of Medicine will be
256 in the Fall of 1999.
Janice Mauren, director of public affairs for the
College of Medicine, said the college’s administra
tors felt an enrollment increase was important for
the college’s future.
The College of Medicine’s facilities originally
were made to accommodate class sizes of 100.
Because of the increase in class size, microscopes
arid other laboratory equipment will be purchased,
and the gross anatomy lab will be upgraded.
Dr. Kelly Hester, associate dean for the College
of Medicine’s academic affairs, said the increase
will allow the college to train more physicians for
family medicine, which is a primary need of the
state and nation.
"We have a history of producing a large number
of students that go into primary care specialties,”
Hester said.
“By increasing the class size, you increase the
number of students that choose those areas just by
the nature of our curriculum.”
More than 55 percent of A&M medical students
chose to specialize in primary care in 1995, and 25
percent went into family medicine.
The College of Medicine provides students with
the opportunity to interact with general practi
tioners, internal specialists and pediatricians.
Hester said faculty members specializing in
clinical medicine will be hired so the college can
maintain its small student-to-faculty ratio.
Medical students study at the Temple campus
after their second year and complete their clinical
studies at Darnell Army Community Hospital,
Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Clinic and
Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center.
During this time they integrate what is learned
in the classroom and what is learned working in
hospital wards.
Despite the growth in enrollment, Hester said the
College of Medicine will not change its mission.
“We’re just going to have the opportunity to bet
ter what we’re doing now,” he said. “When the
school was first started, the initial thought was
that there was going to be 96 to 100 students when
we reached our maximum.
There is no specific plan. However, I think that
a lot of what is going to happen in the future is go
ing to depend on our continued success and what
we do now.”
Nick Rodnicki, The Battalion
Look familiar?
PTTS officer and animal science student Jon Peters kept busy Monday issuing tickets to parking
violators. This vehicle was illegally parked on Spence Street in front of the Agriculture Building.
International Student Services
ensures quality of academic life
□ The program helps internation
al students adjust to student life
in the United States and at Texas
A&M.
By Javier Hinojosa
The Battalion
International students have help available to
them with any problems they encounter. That
friend is International Student Services.
Suzanne Drolesky, director of International
Student Services, said the program is responsible
for making sure the quality of life for internation
al students at A&M meets or beats the students’
expectations.
As non-immi
grant visa hold
ers, international
students must
comply with a
broad range of
government regu
lations.
Those regula
tions become diffi
cult to deal with
because the rules
are complicated,
change frequently
and are interpret
ed differently by
separate agencies.
“It’s like swim
ming in a pool full
of things you’re
not sure are out
there,” Drolesky
said. “There may be sharks in the water, or
places so deep you can drown. There are people
out here, sitting in a boat who can say, ‘Hop in
the boat and let us explain to you how to get
through this uncertain territory.’”
International students have many docu
ments such as visas and passports they must
keep up-to-date.
“It is not a difficult thing to forget,” she said.
“It’s easy for someone to wake up a couple of
months after one of the expiration dates and
say ‘Oh no!”’
There are many mechanisms out there that
are designed to keep international students’
visas in status.
“We are about to change over to a system
where we can actually send international stu
dents notices when, according to our records,
their passports are about to expire or their sta
tus has been breached,” she said.
Victoria Saha, immigration specialist, said a
computer database is being developed that will
handle all the notifications. The database could
be ready to use as early as this fall.
“We are currently working on [the database]
with Computing Information Services, but
we’re not exactly sure how long it will be before
we can use it,” Saha said.
Drolesky said
international stu
dents work hard
to understand the
regulations.
“It can be very
complicated,”
Drolesky said. “An
international stu
dent is faced with
having to under
stand all the Uni
versity regulations
that apply to
everyone and the
many immigration
regulations that
have an impact on
their lives. Some
times those two
things are almost
working against
each other.”
International students must be full-time stu
dents and have special immigration permission
to coenroll. They can jeopardize their immigra
tion status by dropping below 12 hours at any
point during the semester.
International students who fall out of status
are not eligible for a broad number of benefits
offered by the immigration program. This in
cludes practical training experiences, in which
the students work for six months before retum-
See Programs, Page 6