TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015 I SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 I ©2015 STUDENT MEDIA I ©THEBATTONLINE
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During the spring,
general engineering
freshman will apply for m
entry to specific majors.
Shelby Knowles — THE BATTALION
Common First Year policy draws scrutiny
Engineering freshmen apply to
enter specific departments
By Josh Hopkins
Many freshmen engineering students
face an important decision this spring
as a new policy within the 25 by 25 Initia
tive has them again filling out admissions
applications — this time to specific engi
neering majors.
The Common First Year policy, CFY,
delays a student’s admission into a specific
engineering department until at least one
completed semester in the hopes of edu
cating freshmen about the different fields.
The move has drawn criticism, however,
from students who say they didn’t receive
the guidance they wanted and from pro
fessors who are concerned it may hold
students back from gaining necessary ex
perience.
Frank Shipman, computer science pro
fessor, said CFY has the potential to cause
difficulty for students during registration.
“The College of Engineering appears
to be enforcing the Common First Year
by limiting the courses that freshmen
can sign up for even if they already have
credit for some of the freshman require
ments,” Shipman said. “Freshmen seem
to have to get special dispensation to
take additional courses offered within
the College of Engineering, unless they
have already met all the outside of engi
neering requirements from the univer
sity.”
Shipman said CFY also presents diffi
culty for many majors because students
will not focus on their majors until the
second year.
“The main concern with the poten
tial resulting change to undergraduate
degrees is that the students will have less
knowledge and experience in their core
discipline,” Shipman said.
A survey conducted last semester by
the Student Engineers’ Council showed
that while most students agreed with
25X25 ON PG. 4
RESEARCH
TEXAS A&M AT ARKANSAS
A&M effort
helps preserve
Civil War ship
Team works to conserve major artifacts
from the shipwrecked CSS Georgia
Tanner Garza — THE BATTALION
An A&M research team received a porthole
cover from the ship that had folded over time.
By Sam Scott
The remains of a Civil War ironclad at the bot-
tom of Georgia’s Savannah River are being un
earthed, and A&M faculty and students have been
contacted to help preserve artifacts.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began exca
vating the ship in January. The Corps plans to dredge
and deepen the Savannah Shipping Channel, where
the CSS Georgia rests. To continue forward with the
plans, the Confederate ship had to be moved.
Artifacts from the ship are in the process of being
excavated, processed and shipped to the Conserva
tion Research Laboratory on Riverside Campus,
where they will be conserved.
Jim Jobling, project manager at CRL, said small
items are being received at the moment, such as nails
and spikes, but the team expects to receive larger
items in the oncoming months, such as propellers,
cannons and even the engines.
“We’re going to get four cannons — three of
them are big ones, between eight to nine feet long
and one of them is about six feet long,” Jobling said.
“We’re also going to get a propeller and shaft. The
shaft is 12 feet long and the propeller is about six feet
in diameter.”
CRL expects to conserve artifacts from the CSS
Georgia over the next three to four years due to
the comprehensive process involved in conserving
each item.
“These things are going to take time,” Jobling
said. “They’ve got to be cleaned, and then they go
through their electrolytic reduction process, and
that’ll take a couple of years because they’re big —
SHIP ON PG. 2
CAMPUS
NO SILVER TAPS TO BE HELD IN MARCH
Silver Taps, held for a student who dies while
enrolled at A&M, will not be March in March.
Kelley Raye Miller Herman will be honored in the
April Silver Taps ceremony on April 7.
Battle for SEC’s No. 2
Vanessa Pena — THE BATTALION
Junior guard Danuel House, shown in a recent home win over Florida, made
seven 3-pointers on the road Saturday against Tennessee.
Razorbacks major hurdle
on road to NCAA Tourney
By Alex Scott
f’Vpf exas A&M visits Arkansas seek-
I ing its first win against the RPI
top 50, which could help land
Billy Kennedy’s first NCAA
Tournament appearance in his time with
the Aggies.
The men’s basketball team travels to
Fayetteville, Arkansas, at 8 p.m. T uesday
in a battle for second place in the SEC.
No. 18 Arkansas (22-5, 11-3 SEC) leads
Texas A&M in the SEC standings by a
single game. The Razorbacks, which have
won six consecutive games, rank No. 14
in the country in points per game (79.5).
The most standout facet to their game,
however, might be how they spread the
wealth, as they average 17 assists per game
— No. 6 in the country.
The Aggies (19-7, 10-4 SEC) are rid
ing a three-game win streak in which they
have knocked off conference opponents
and climbed the ladder of the SEC stand
ings. A&M sits at a tie for third place with
Ole Miss.
A&M head coach Billy Kennedy said
both teams play great basketball, and the
game will pose a challenge for each team.
“We are coming off of a good win
against South Carolina and are going to
play one of the hottest teams in the league
in Arkansas,” Kennedy said. “They are
playing with a lot of confidence and are
very tough to beat at home. We are going
to have to take care of the ball and be able
to attack their press right away.”
The Razorbacks are led by Bobby Por-
tis and Michaels Qualls, who both average
more than 15 points and five rebounds per
game. Portis is shooting almost 56 percent
from the field, while averaging above 47
percent from 3-point range.
Danuel House has been the go-to guy
for the Aggies as of late. In A&M’s last
game versus South Carolina, House hit
7-of-l 1 shots from beyond the arc en route
to a 25-point outing, tying his season high.
In the past five games, the junior guard has
ARKANSAS ON PG. 3
■ 1
SCIENCE
‘Science Unshackled’: Prof talks astronomy
James communicates science
concepts to the public
By Wade Feielin
Renee James visited Texas A&M
^ Monday to discuss her new book,
“Science Unshackled,” and the vari
ous branches of science in general.
James has been a professor at
Sam Houston State University since
1999 and largely teaches astronomy
classes.
Originally trained in stellar spec
troscopy, which splits the light from
stars into individual wavelengths that
can then be analyzed to determine a
star’s characteristics, she eventually
decided she wanted to do more to
get students interested in scientific
study.
“Somewhere around the time
I got tenure I also realized I really
enjoyed communicating the science
to the public — not just to other
scientists but to my students,” James
said. “I needed to get it across to
them so I started finding analogies
I could use in my classes and that
would lead to, ‘This isn’t found in a
textbook, I’d like to write an article
about this.’”
From there, James said her writ
ing began to blossom. She has two
published books — “Seven Wonders
of the Universe That You Prob
ably Took For Granted,” released
in 2010, and “Science Unshackled,”
released this year.
James said “Science Unshackled”
contains five basic stories on curios
ity, creativity and the endless poten
tial that comes along with them. One
particular chapter follows a man’s re
search into cone snails.
“These snails in the Pacific are
quite venomous and can kill you but
they haven’t exactly been a plague
upon humankind — there’s been
maybe a dozen deaths ever from
them, but he was still curious about
why they did what they did,” James
said. “One of the components of
the cone snail venom is now used
in a very potent painkiller, but that
wasn’t where he was heading with
this. ”
JAMES ON PG. 4
Tanner Garza —THE BATTALION
Renee James, author and Sam Houston State
astronomy professor, spoke on campus Monday.