The second Board of Trustees meeting of the year convened on February 11th. The morning session consisted of the President’s Report and a presentation by Fr. Francis Morrisey, a professor of Canon Law, where Catholic sponsorship was discussed.

In the afternoon, the Trustees discussed on-campus housing, approved a tuition increase for the following year, and acknowledged that the next President of St. Scholastica should be a Catholic (though this would not preclude the hiring of an exceptional non-Catholic applicant).

Presidents Report

Dr. Goodwin, in his president’s address, discussed student aid, specifically the Pell Grant and the Minnesota State Grant. Both of these grants are “on the table” this year because Minnesota is trying to cut costs. The MN State Grant and the Pell Grant both aid around 900 students each on our campus. A decrease in these grants could negatively impact those students ability to pay for their education.

In an attempt to prevent such an adverse change, the President traveled to the Capitol with student representatives to lobby for continued support of the Minnesota State Grant this past week on Community Day. The President and the student representatives met with state representatives and senators to voice their concern about the grants being reduced and to advocate for the state to leave the grants alone.

During his president’s address, Dr. Goodwin also commented on the state of the Graduate, Extended, and Online (GEO) programs at the College. The College did not meet the projected growth markers, likely because the growth markers were quite aggressive for an already well developed area of higher education. The growth numbers will be adjusted for next year to reflect a more modest growth (one more consistent with what actually occurred this year).

Catholic Sponsorship

The presentation by Fr. Morrisey on sponsorship of the College was given to clarify the relationship between Canon Law and Civil Law. The Trustees wanted to make sure that in moving forward, the College would not take any action that would jeopardize it’s Catholic status. This presentation was mainly for educational purposes, but will help guide the decisions the Trustees make in the future.

Housing Discussion

The Trustees have been acutely aware of the housing issues for the past two years and are actively seeking ways to solve the housing strains. Among other challenges, several problems have slowed the possibility of creating additional housing: The primary types of housing needed are additional suites. Such additions would pull Freshman and Sophomores into Somers, improving student retention rates and allowing for more upper class students to stay on campus. This addition would be costly (estimated around $15M), and because of other projects underway, the College’s credit rating would be adversely effected by additional construction.

The Trustees had hoped to build additional housing by going through a third party (off-balance sheet) builder, but because of the location and type of housing the College needs, this would not be a viable option. Moving forward with additional housing would adversely effect the College’s credit rating. Though a great disappointment to the Trustees, providing additional student housing will need to be held off until around 2014 or 2015.

 

Tuition Increase

During the business portion of the meeting, the Trustees approved a 4% increase in undergraduate tuition, a 3% average increase in the GEO programs, and 3% increases for room and board for the 2010-11 year. The Trustees, concerned with this yearly increase, discussed this topic at length. The discussion ended in approval of the tuition raise, but the reservations voiced by the Trustees should lead to deeper discussion regarding these types of raises in the future.

Though our school’s increases are proportional (and conservative) when measured by our comparables, the concern is that the increase is still greater than the inflation rate. What makes this discussion difficult is the value prospective students place on the price of an institution, as well as the acknowledgement that these increases reflect general trends in the cost of higher education.

Moving Forward

The discussion about our school’s Catholic identity, its sponsorship, and whether or not the president should be Catholic has unfolded over the past year. The result of these discussions was a motion regarding the type of president the College would give preference to in the future. The Trustees moved that “in presidential searches, [the College] is committed to seeking a qualified academic leader who is Roman Catholic.” The resolution does not preclude hiring an exceptional non-Catholic president, but acknowledges that the College would actively seek out exceptional Roman Catholic applicants.

Questions, comments, concerns? Feel free to stop me in the hall or send me an e-mail. You can find my information in the school Directory!

I’ve always had a varying interest in cosmology and dimensional theories. After a conversation with a friend the other day about how many dimensions scientists think there may be (up to 11 I believe), I decided to research it myself. Much to my dismay, it turns out that scientists simply create different dimensions for mathematical purposes. When they do this they can manipulate their theoretical particles and discover new theoretical patterns.

However, there was a ‘fourth’ dimension that was listed (and not very well elaborated on). The fourth dimension is time, our way of measuring change (sorry if you were hoping for something different). However, I realized when reading about the first three dimensions that they always had an ‘opposite’ motion. For instance, in the first dimension you could go forwards or backwards (which was just reverse forwards), in the second dimension, you could go left or right (right was just reverse left), and in the third dimension you could go up or down (down was just reverse up). In time we simply go forward, shouldn’t there be a “reverse forward”?

This was the extent of my musings on one Saturday afternoon, until recently when I was watching National Geographic on TV and they had some cosmologists talking about the universe as a whole and all this really neat stuff that I had never come across before. I realized at that point that perhaps reverse time was possible, but extremely difficult to come about.

Scientists show pictures of galaxies that are over 200,000 light years away from our earth, it can only be assumed then that we are seeing what the galaxy looked like 200,000 years ago. We aren’t seeing it’s current state (which we’ll have to wait an additional 200,000 years to see). In effect we are looking back in time. It’s similar to picking up a photograph from the 1940s, you can see what was going on, but the only reason you know it changed is because you’re looking at it from the perspective from someone living in the 21st century.

However, if it were possible (which it’s not, and physicists are doubtful it ever will be) to travel faster than the speed of light (approximately 300,000km per second) we would be able to escape our dimension of “time” and with the use of a powerful telescope view the earth at a distant time.

For those interested in changing the course of time this would be useless, but if you were an anthropologist, archaeologist, sociologists, or biologist, the impact of such a tool would be tremendous. Cultures could be analyzed, the unfolding of civilization would be available to view, and perhaps the best part, we would no longer have to watch cheesy re-enactments of of historical events on the history channel (we could see the real thing!).

 

Haven’t had time to polish up any of my drafts floating around on here, so instead I’m going to post some of my latest workouts so I can keep track of them for the future!

Saturday October 23, 2010

10 minutes Hand-stand push ups (77)

5 minutes body-weight squats (277)

2 minutes pull-ups (34)

1 minute push-ups (67)

Total: 455

I did this on a running clock (as opposed to resetting it for every different timed interval) and still managed to get a PR!

Friday October 22, 2010

30 clean & press with 115lbs for time (adapted from 135lb clean & press for time)

4:38

Thursday & Wednesday workouts have escaped my memory

Tuesday October 19, 2010

20 minute running clock, as many rounds as possible of the following:

2x muscle-ups (on bar, kipping pull-up)

4x kettlebell swing (70lb dumbbell)

6x hand-stand push ups (hspu)

Completed 16 rounds

I woke up this morning enthralled with the idea of a rainy day in Duluth. I needed to stay in my apartment and study and prepare for an upcoming trip the Apostle Island, and a cold rainy day is always the perfect motivator to stay inside.

I woke up early enough for a day with class at 5:30 in the afternoon, made myself breakfast, drank some coffee, and sat down to read some Social Theory while starting a couple loads of laundry. After I had moved my laundry into the dryers I decided I should shower and move on to my Organization Development reading. Moving to my room so my laptop could charge and I could type up notes was the first mistake I made.

I soon found myself browsing my own blog, and wishing that my theme could be different. What ensued was two and a half to three hours of theme editing, background changing, header choosing chaos. The end result? None of them were any good, and I ended up with the same theme I had before. (You will notice however, that now you can subscribe to my blog!)

The search for a new theme made me realize one thing about my blog however, the title is painfully long. I had noticed this before, but it was even more obvious when half of the themes wouldn’t allow the title to appear in one line. What does this mean for you? It means that “The Northern Student Perspective” will be undergoing a change of title. It will probably reflect the more laid-back nature of the blog (which was originally created for a class), but still allow for me to wax philosophic if needed.

If you have any suggestions for blog titles, feel free to drop a note!

Taken from http://fhswolvesden.wikispaces.com/Language

I’m not a grammar monger, in fact, I make grammatical errors quite often. For instance, I recently sent an email for an internship without first looking over what I had written. Normally, I would read through my e-mail three to four times to catch small punctuation problems, but in my haste I had neglected to do so.

Upon reviewing the e-mail I realized that I had two run-on sentences. These weren’t normal run on sentences where the writer babbles for a little bit longer than needed, but complete changes of thought. Now, I bring this to everyone’s attention not because I want everyone to share in the horror I felt at that moment, but because I think there’s different levels of grammatical errors.

First, there’s the personal level. The personal level consists of those errors in conversation, letters, or small blogs (such as this one). It can also spill over into academic essays and other smaller papers, where you will be corrected and then released to wander on your merry way.

The second is the professional level. This would be similar to a spelling error or grammatical mishap in a resume, cover letter, or other personal-business ventures. In these first two categories the individual is to blame, but their mistakes are understandable since they’re working alone.

The third, and I think most disturbing, is the institutional level. At this point, an office staff, or some larger body, should be checking what messages are being sent out (because it is reflective of them). I’ve been sitting in a lounge in the school dormitory staring at a sign that says “Please be courteous of those who use this space and do not remove college property from this area.”

I’m not sure whether I should only be courteous to those who don’t remove the ‘college property’ (furniture), or simply not remove the furniture as a courtesy to everyone. If the first is true I could take one of these sweet footrest-chairs without concern, since I don’t live in the dormitory. If the second meaning of the sign is what the office was aiming for, then I shouldn’t remove the furniture as a courtesy to others.

People always get a little bit weird when they’re in uncomfortable places. In Minnesota this happens yearly, usually all year long. In the winter time people are on the verge of hyperactivity in order to keep their body temperatures up, and in the summer they’re sluggish and mercurial. Although you can excuse the people of Minnesota (and other regions with similar climates) for their odd behavior at times, it doesn’t explain the fact that today, I ate a sticker.

The ubiquitous fresh produce sticker has always been the bane of vegetable and fruit lovers alike, myself included. I try to keep a fairly healthy diet, consuming fruits and vegetables daily. However, the veggie/fruit stickers are all over, and you never know if you’re one bite away from swallowing apple #4103′s sticker. I’m most likely to swallow a sticker if it’s on a vegetable though. The reason I run into this problem is that in my hurry to make lunch I usually wash, but neglect to remove, stickers from my vegetables.

So today as I created my two masterpieces (otherwise known as wraps), a sticker chose to change the texture and flavor of one of them. It stealthily held onto the back side of a red pepper slice and buried itself between the red chard and sprouts. As I started on my second wrap I suddenly realized something was off. My pepper was new, it should be luscious and crisp, free of a filmy skin. Then it hit me, it hit me like the impact of a cheetah running full bore into a wall, it hit me like a skydiver who’s parachute fails to open, and most of all, it hit me like a slap in the face from a sticker (none of which I’ve ever literally experienced). My eyes narrowed, I became acutely aware of my surroundings, the smell of my coffee intensified, the noise of a car in the distance, and the children playing in my hall. The hairs on my back bristled as I let out a roar of indignation: “Ugh, a sticker.”

And then I finished my wrap.

In high school I developed some sort of odd muscle tension problem in my left hand. It came after our Christmas break, right after I’d been surfing the internet for two weeks solid, like every good adolescent does when on a winter break in the frigid North. I had run the gambit, writing a little, chatting on Facebook, and even writing e-mails (yes people still did that then, for more than just applying for jobs). When I asked the athletic trainer at our school about the pain she dismissed it as carpal tunnel.

Image courtesy of some crazy Russian blog

My parents purchased one of those ergonomic keyboards for me after I explained to them what had caused the pain in my hand, but since coming to college I’ve switched to a laptop. The pain has returned intermittently, usually during finals when the amount of stress and papers required spikes. When the pain hits I usually mash my left hand into some hard cool surface (such as a table) and try to massage the muscles between the bones, as the feeling is something similar to your hand tightening and then never quite releasing. However, recently the pain has returned, and save for clicking a mouse a little more often in preparation for the GRE, I haven’t been typing more than usual.

Last night while attempting to suffocate the pain in my hand (yes I was stuffing it under a pillow in hopes it would simply ‘die’ off), I decided to turn on the MacBook and see what I could find about ‘throbbing hand pain’. After reading about ‘throbbing pain’ (notice how the search engine forgot hand?), and how it could be caused by a breast abscess, gout, cancer, or frostbite, I realized that I may have looked in the wrong place.

I did find a short blog by a chiropractor that talked about people usually attributing the source of pain they feel to where they’re actually feeling it (i.e., my hand hurts, so there must be something wrong with it). The writer went on to explain that it can also be caused by spinal problems, such as the base of a nerve being pinched. Renewed by this new idea I quickly started massaging my neck and the pain subsided.

After discovering this I considered how nice it would be to see a chiropractor and get a professional massage before taking the GRE to straighten me out and loosen me up, but eventually decided against it. Save for how wonderful it would feel, I’m afraid all that relaxation and pampering would change my thinking, right now my brain is operating in a body that is regularly being pummeled by my workout regimen. Relax all the muscles and I might lose some useful information, like y=mx+b or how 2^n could actually be a greater number than 3^n if n is a negative number. That’s useful stuff.

Besides, it’s just a little pain in the hand.

I enjoy cooking. In the summer months when I have more available time (because of less studying) I usually like to cook more if I can. However, because of the type of work I typically do in the summer, I rarely get to cook during my ‘holiday’. Fortunately I was able to move back up to campus earlier this year, and have consequently already moved into my placement for the remainder of my last year at school. Because of all these glorious contingencies, I’ve been cooking and creating what I want too (which also makes for an affable roommate).

A wonderful hamburger and potato combo

Last night we had Cajun style baked potatoes with corn (not pictured) and hamburgers. My hamburger was topped with red chard (which is high in vitamins and minerals), pickle, tomato, and mayo. I got the recipe from a book my sister had given me for vegetarians. Now I don’t mean to alarm you, but I’m not a vegetarian (see large hamburger). I just don’t eat meat very often, it’s too expensive and it seems like everyone is up in the air as to whether it’s really all that healthy for you or not. (Though if you check out the paleo diet or other cave man diets which I usually follow loosely, you’ll see they like to have you eating lots of red meat.)

My lunches have been a little bit lighter and more fitting of gearing up for a good workout at the gym. They consist of wraps with a good amount of veggies packed in. Typically they have some mayo (the kind with olive oil in it), red chard, tomatoes, green peppers, red onions, and sprouts. I like to top the ingredients with spicy brown mustard for a little bit of a kick. I’m thinking of adding lentils at some point and switching out my mustard for that spicy rooster sauce that no one seems to know the name of.

A couple of my wraps! (I know, bad lighting)

You see? Not all college students have horrible diets. I will admit that the baked potato wedges covered in my homemade Cajun sauce might have been pushing it, but I won’t have those for a little while and that will make it all better.

Workout

5 Muscle Ups

Benched 4 sets of 8 of the following weights: 135, 185, 205, 205,

5 Sets of the following (no break)

10 weighted crunches (45pd plate and 12.5pd DB for feet)

10 Adapted Sweepers (MFers)

15 GHD Sit Ups

10 Side-to-side twists w/ 45pd plate

5 Knees to Elbows

Image from Bureau of Labor Statistics

I was cleaning some canoes behind the school today with another student. We needed to grab a power washer from the maintenance workers on campus. My friend and I made our way down a cement staircase that was wet from an office workers air conditioner leaking above our heads, made our way into the underground office space that shared an inimical boiler that radiated heat. Winding our way through buckets and hoses we made our way up a small cement incline to the ad hoc break room where the maintenance guys were taking their 9:00 break. The room seemed to be the only air conditioned part of their ‘office’ space.

I told the guys that we needed the pressure washer in order to spray down the canoes. One of the workers mumbled something about having been told we would be down sometime to get it, while the other got up to help us.

We hauled the pressure washer out of the boiler room area and up the stairs passing under the dripping air conditioner once again and into the alley behind the school. The maintenance worker who decided to help came up with us and threw some hose out, then connected it to the machine and provided us with some soap.

Later when we ran out of gas and had to go see the workers again we found them still taking their break in the air conditioned room. It didn’t surprise me they were breaking for longer than the allotted 15 minutes. In construction work I’ve done the same on numerous occasions, but it reminded me of how the tactile worker (those who work with their hands, in a broad sense), can take liberties like this that a knowledge worker (such as the office crew) cannot.

The tactile worker has knowledge that is specialized, and if they are good at what they do, they are allowed more leeway than those who do not excel in their field. According to “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” by Matthew B. Crawford, this is because the tactile worker is rated by objective standards (i.e. are the bearings he greased and installed into the wheel of your car going to work, or will they explode on the highway and send you for a ride?), while the knowledge worker is forced to live by subjective standards (i.e. is a 15 percent or 30 percent increase in efficiency good enough?).

This to me explains why in the world of tactile workers, a ‘place’ I’ve frequented during my summers, there’s always good cause for letting some people go and giving others raises, while in my experience with office workers, there’s always some emotion and subjective reasoning to releasing, or raising the status of, employees.

Perhaps that’s what draws people to the trades, they’re simple and straight forward. Either the line is plumb, or it’s not, either you made the eighth-inch gap disappear, or you didn’t. I find solace in the fact that I have a family history of tactile workers, and therefore a fair amount of experience working these jobs should I need to fall back on them, or simply find that I’m more comfortable in the tactile working field.

Workout

10 kipping pull-ups, five muscle-ups, six squats

20mins of as many rounds of the following as you can do:

135lb Squat – 7 reps

35lb DB Walking Lunge, right hand (10 steps)

7 Burpees

35lb DB Walking Lunge, left hand (10 steps)

Completed: 10 rounds

Jogged 1/4 mile to apartment for cooldown

Courtesy of the NYTimes

Two reports published Friday show that research with mice has shown promising results in regenerating cells. The idea for the research came from the fact that zebra fish and newts can regrow whole limbs when needed. Scientists found that they do this by inactivating two genes called Rb and Arf. Apparently other animals that can regenerate limbs only have Rb, humans developed Arf as a backup if Rb failed to stop a gene from regenerating to quickly.

One drawback with this finding is that the Rb and Arf genes stop cellular regeneration since it can lead to tumors (they even mention cancer). As one would expect, that would cause a great amount of concern, but the scientists at Stanford (where the research was done) are still quite excited about their finding.

What is interesting about the process is that it is more natural (in the sense that it occurs in nature in other species). Dr. Blau, one of the researchers at Stanford said that “We mammals lost this regenerative capacity in order to have better tumor suppression, but if we reawaken it in a careful way we could make use of it in a clinical setting.” The scientists hope to develop drugs that would inhibit the Rb and Arf genes for a certain amount of time, but when the drugs wore off the genes would be reactivated in order to continue their pivotal role in tumor suppression.

Although the Stanford scientists expressed some hope that this could help in limb regeneration for humans, others have been more reserved. Dr. Brockes, another scientist, believes that genes related to regeneration are in all animals, however genes that are specific to regenerating limbs are found in specific animals, such as Salamanders. Dr. Brockes has found a protein specific to Salamanders that coordinates the regrowth of a limb. However, if it turns out that these genes to regenerate whole limbs are specific only to specific species, humans may not have the same capacity.

Other scientists at the University of California, San Francisco took a different approach to cellular regeneration. They found a way to sidestep the stem cell part of the cellular regeneration, which takes out the risk of floating stem cells which could cause tumors. Dr. Srivastava, the lead researcher, has much more modest hopes for his work than the researchers at Stanford. He has focused on taking ordinary heart tissue cells and converting them into heart muscle cells, which otherwise cannot be regenerated. His work is done by reprogramming three proteins (which are not listed) that are involved in the process of creating this cellular change. Now Dr. Srivastava must concentrate on developing a drug cocktail to gain the same results in humans.

The Moral Question

I participated in a class entitled “The Psychology of Religion and Belief” this past spring, aside from how interesting most of the psychology of belief was, I remember listening to an audio recording of the book “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris (available on Youtube here). Harris is a militan atheist, meaning that he is attempting to undermine religious institutions. I don’t support this type of atheism (nor it’s religious counterpart), but I remember Harris fuming (he reads the book, I think it adds to the text to hear the writer read his ‘letter’) about how Christians have killed millions by rejecting the use of stem cell research. He calls them insane for considering a blastocyt to have as much value as a fully formed human being. I will admit I found his argument quite persuasive, but as I sat at my kitchen table this morning ruminating over the NYTimes article I considered the other side a bit more, and am now undecided on my stance regarding stem cell research.

My first question was whether or not we would have continued to research other ways to regenerate cells if we had settled on stem cells in the beginning. It could be that we would, since stem cells carry the intrinsic danger of creating tumors and other cancerous cells. However if we hadn’t, it could be that the use of stem cells could be misused. I’m not saying it would, but since many other human inventions seem to create black market economies (think of adoption, surrogacy, arms dealing), it’s possible that stem cell research could fall into the same plane.

At this point I started to side with the long-term view of the Catholic Church, or more specifically, what I’ve heard of the Intellectual Tradition. At that moment it seemed that they had taken the correct stance, a stance against stem cell research. Humans are still a rather ‘young’ race on a rather ‘young’ planet put in the context of the universe. From this perspective, our rush to use stem cells would seem short-sighted. In this case, the Church had the correct view, stating that we should not be manipulating these genes.

However, how many people could have been saved if we had gone ahead with the original stem cell research? Were the people using a larger, more abstract moral reasoning, or did the opinions of the nation come from the usual media and political battles that take place, with dramatic inaccuracies thrown in to win over the opinion of the majority? I would more readily believe that the majority were won over with the latter, but that perhaps the former reasoning was done by the few who started the ‘battle’.

This research provides potential for lives to be saved, and if it is safer than the original, and skirts the black market contingency of some other research, it could be better than it’s predecessor. This research came as a direct result from stem cell research being rejected as a viable means of cellular regeneration in humans. But if this research hadn’t ended with this result, would it be right to denying people a treatment that could increase their longevity?

The original NYTimes article can be found here.