The voice of Texas Wesleyan University students since 1917

The RamblerTable tennis puts anothernational title under its belt.Sports, page 5

Wesleyan’s music program prepares for fall concerts.A&E, page 4

WEDNESDAYSeptember 22, 2010

Vol. 93 • No. 17

www.therambler.org

Enrollment increases 15% from last yearShauna Bankssbbanks@mail.txwes.edu

Students and faculty now have new teams to root for and more resources to take advantage of in the Texas Wesleyan community.

Official enrollment num-bers were released Sept. 8, revealing a 15.8 percent in-crease from last year in new undergraduate students.

Pati Alexander, vice presi-dent of enrollment and stu-dent services, said this is the sixth year in a row that Wes-leyan has increased in new student enrollment, with the main campus up by 4.2 percent this year overall.

The enrollment increase has been attributed to many different factors, rang-ing from marketing to im-proved financial aid in the form of scholarships.

“We also changed schol-arships this year,” Alexan-der said. “We increased our scholarships to transfer stu-dents and freshmen. I think the facilities have improved, and the fitness center is attractive to the new stu-dents.”

Of the 557 new under-graduate students on cam-pus this fall, 156 are ath-letes.

Some of these athletes will fill spots on athletic teams where teammates have graduated, and oth-ers make up the new cross-

country and track team. Katie Cowan, junior edu-

cation major and pitcher on the Wesleyan softball team, came to the university as a transfer student on an almost full athletic schol-arship, along with several other new athletes.

“There are a few more transfers and freshmen,” Cowan said. “I think we are going to be really good this year. Everyone can hit. De-fense is awesome.”

Associate Provost Dr. Helena Bussell said she be-lieves the new student out-reach facilities on campus, such as the freshman ad-vising center and academic success center, should also be given some credit for the increased enrollment.

“I think it’s because we’re building outreach more so than we have in the past, re-ally trying to reach students and make sure they get the services they need,” Bussell said. “We want to make sure they do well once they’re here. Our academic support services area—they do a re-ally good job.”

In addition to undergrad-uate student enrollment, Alexander said the univer-sity has seen an increase in freshman retention from the 2009-2010 school year. Wesleyan is currently up to 66 percent retention, mean-

SGA to use iPads to reduce wasteRachel Peelrlpeel@mail.txwes.edu

Student Government As-sociation plans to vote on purchasing iPad’s for all SGA members in the next two to three weeks in an effort to go green.

The SGA members are planning to meet in two to three weeks to pass a bill concerning the use of iPads and the purchasing of lap-tops for approved students. Heath Scott, president of SGA, said if the bill passes, the SGA plans to purchase 15-20 iPads. At $499 a piece, the combined cost for 15-20 iPads ranges from $7,485 to $9,980 without tax.

“This is going green,” Scott said. “We will cut out all pa-per usage, we’ll go wireless. There is no reason why the student government of this university cannot be at the forefront of technology.”

Last year SGA wasted more

than 2,000 sheets of paper, Scott said. Currently Scott said he is working on pur-chasing the iPads from Apple.

“Right now I’m working with Apple to maybe score a discount,” Scott said.

Daniel Martinez-Torres, senior psychology major, said, “As long as the student body isn’t being affected by the iPad purchase and the students are allowed to get what they need, then I’m ok with it.”

SGA will purchase the iPads out of its budget.

The budget consists of 2.4 percent of the general fee paid by students. The general fee is $46 per credit hour or $610 for the block rate (12 hours or more), said Lori Logan, Certified Public Ac-countant Controller said.

SGA receives more than $23,000 per semester if ev-ery student enrolled takes 12 credit hours, according to the fall enrollment numbers pro-

vided by Pati Alexander, vice president of enrollment and student services, and the per-centage of student fees allot-ted for student government.

As of Sept. 15, there are 1604 undergraduate stu-dents, Alexander said.

Not all SGA members are on board with the decision.

“I love technology as much as the next person, but I feel that we could have saved the money we would spend on iPads for something more beneficial for the students,” said Delvin Hill, sophomore criminal justice major and SGA representative.

Some Wesleyan students are also concerned about the decision to purchase the iPad for SGA members.

“I think it’s a pretty irre-sponsible thing to suggest, considering there are many other things in campus that need improvement,” said Georgia Johnson, junior lib-eral studies major.

English professor takes language tools personalShauna Bankssbbanks@mail.txwes.edu

Dr. Patsy Robles-Goodwin works with future educators and bright faces from all walks of life. It is the diversi-ty among these students, and the students they will teach in the future, that she em-braces in her own teaching.

Coming to Texas Wesleyan from the University of North Texas, Robles-Goodwin has been the bilingual English as a second language director for the past four years. She began her fifth year this fall.

As a professor in the School of Education, Robles-Goodwin said she strives to give her students the tools they will need to handle di-versity in the classroom once they become teachers them-selves.

“I really like her,” said Morgan Yinger, ju-nior education major. “She’s definitely one of my favorite teachers because she brings a lot of her personal experience into the class and relates instead of reading out of the book.”

Robles-Goodwin’s classes range from basic level to advanced theory on diver-sity and how it affects today’s educational system.

She emphasizes to her stu-

dents that diversity and cul-ture are not only defined by people’s skin color, but also from their social economic status, gender, age and reli-gion.

“She has taught me the importance of helping the English Language Learner students,” said Rachel Mc-Clinton, senior education major. “Almost every teach-er wants to help all students, but many do not understand how to reach those students. She has given me the strate-gies to reach those students.”

Growing up in Lubbock, Robles-Goodwin encoun-tered a different atmosphere where diversity was rarely acknowledged and some educators frowned upon speaking anything but Eng-lish.

These experiences have shaped the way she teaches and allowed her to use her own experiences as exam-ples in her classroom.

For the past year, Robles-Goodwin has been work-ing on the first phase of her

research about Latina ad-ministrators and their ex-periences. She has visited administrators across Dallas and Fort Worth to record their experiences.

Robles-Goodwin’s re-search also includes study-ing optimism about every-day life among Hispanics in the third and fourth grades. Her findings, along with the findings of two other col-leagues from UNT, have al-ready been published in The Tapestry Journal.

“They deal with a lot of issues sometimes because their parents don’t have a job or their parents don’t speak English,” Robles-Goodwin said. “You know, all these things that sometimes we don’t even have to think about. When we finished our study, there was about three or four students whose scores indicated that they were on the verge of severely depressed.”

After a year of working on

Kickoff comes up short

Meisa Keivani Najafabadi | Rambler StaffWesleyan students, faculty and staff gather to enjoy barbecue during the Wesleyan Signa-ture Student Experience Kickoff Sept. 15. Food disappeared in about 30 minutes, as event organizers had only planned for 300 people. More than 350 showed up for the free food.

ENROLLMENT, page 3

 ESL, page 3

“She has given me the strategies to reach [English Language Learner] students.”

Rachel McClintonsenior education major