As students approach the end of their undergraduate programs, a very important choice is presented to them. This is the choice of whether to continue education in a graduate program or to enter the work force.

Each year, hundreds of students from SDSU make this choice. Two students from the Computer Science department, Zachary Plovanic and Derek Fernholz, recently made their choice for this year. Plovanic made the decision to continue on to Purdue University, whereas Fernholz will be working for IBM.

Fernholz said he wanted to pursue Web design and development, but there aren’t any good graduate programs in that area. Also, the benefits for an advanced degree are low because employers are more focused on a work portfolio then on academic history.

Plovanic, on the other hand, said that his choice was motivated by his love of learning at SDSU. “I have managed to maintain excellent grades throughout college, and I enjoy doing it,” he said. “I figured, why not stay in the academic world and pursue a more advanced degree.” Plovanic added that he doesn’t see himself in the work force in the future, but in a more academic setting as a professor.

To prepare for going into the grad program, Plovanic stressed the idea of working hard in school and starting preparations early. “You definitely want to secure any internship you can during your undergrad years, preferably one that is research-oriented,” he said.

He also put heavy emphasis on grades. “Keep your grades up. All of them. It shows that you know how to work hard at everything you do.”

As for Fernholz, he said that employers value real work over education. “If you go for an interview with a high school diploma and a great portfolio of work you have done, you will be hired over someone with a master’s degree 75 percent of the time,” he said. “Of course, you have to come across as a team member as well.”

For Fernholz, the decision was almost made for him. With the lack of graduate programs and few benefits of having an advanced degree, it really wasn’t a hard choice. In Plovanic’s case, he said the idea of being a poor college student for another four to five years was the only thing that gave him pause. In the long run, Plovanic believes the benefits will make up for the costs.

So, all in all, which is the right choice? It really has to do with what you see yourself doing in the future. For those who see themselves in work-oriented jobs, gaining real-world experience is key. In many cases, an advanced degree is the wrong way to go for this kind of person because the costs far outweigh the benefits.

For those who see themselves in a more theory-focused job, graduate school is definitely the way to go. Research and teaching are great examples of this. As students enter their junior year of college, they should sit down with advisers and consider the course their future will take. Getting internship experience early on is great for any future, but in many cases, getting started on personal projects is key.

#1.882554:3111531409.jpg:life_sb-003.jpg::Stephen Brua

The Board of Regents said they are fully committed to having a system-wide laptop program implemented in South Dakota. But what does that mean for SDSU’s student population and Information Technology staff?

Quickly, lets go through some background information on the Regents’ plan. They envision having all students at regent institutions being required to have a laptop. These laptops, as the plan is stated at this time, would only be allowed to come through the program. A list of available models would be given to students who would then choose their laptop. They would lease this laptop from SDSU with the option to buy it at the end of the lease term (three years at this time), or to start a new lease with a new laptop.

So what does this mean for the students? They would pay somewhere between $300 and $400 a semester for their laptop lease. They would be encouraged – if not required – to bring their laptop to class every day. Also, subject matter for classes would be more oriented towards electronic content. Students would also have the added responsibility of paying attention in class with the most distracting device ever created by man sitting right in front of them.

Part of this plan also includes training faculty to use technology in their classes to deliver content to student, making the laptop useful. This doesn’t present an issue for faculty that have content that is easily translated to digital format – notes, slides, etc. Faculty who work more from the board on the fly instead of lecturing from a prepared outline, it is much more of a challenge.

Now, as far as the IT department of SDSU is concerned, this is a huge endeavor. If you have ever had to go to eSDSU to have your laptop serviced, you know that they already have a backlog of work. Currently, they must service laptops from only a handful of departments. This constitutes maybe – a conservative estimate – of 150 students. With a required laptop program on campus, they will be required to service the current 12,000 students all with laptops they are required to have working almost 100 percent of the time because their class material is geared towards an electronic environment. This would be akin to having every student at SDSU descend upon Perkins restaurant at noon on a Sunday. The size of the laptop service program would have to be at least 10 times larger. Of course, you will have to add the required bureaucratic overhead of managers and directors as well.

Plus, we haven’t even started talking about the required upgrades to almost every single room on campus so they have desk space and power outlets for each student to have their laptop in class. Also, the wireless infrastructure on campus will have to be vastly extended. Wireless Internet access will have to be available in almost every classroom. If you have been in the know about how much the recent network expansion that SDSU did was, the figures for this may be staggering. Sadly, the state legislature recently took funding assistance for this part of the plan out of their higher education budget, so the burden of paying for these upgrades to facilities will have to come from somewhere else (e.g. students).

However, the plan is not all bad. A quick conversation with the Students’ Association President, Chris Daugaard, will show you that even though implementing the system looks to be an excruciating process, the result might be pretty nice. The SA’s position seems to be that the program is good on paper but that it doesn’t work out well financially for SDSU. An interesting fact – found out through research for this article – was that SDSU has the most financially underprivileged student population of any other regental institution. This means that our students make less per capita than students at any other university in the state.

The program would be awesome to have, but that the cost of putting it in place is daunting at best, a nightmare at worst. And the price of all those desks and wireless transmitters has to come from somewhere.

SDSU doesn’t need to have this requirement placed upon it. Students in majors that truly require a computer will more than likely already have one or be planning on getting one. However, forcing every student to have a laptop is a mistake. The way it works now, with having a select number of departments requiring a laptop, works very well.

The SDSU Chess Club has been around for a long time. Few remain who know about the early years. The club has never been big, but the members are always very excited about chess and love to play the game.

Currently, about five members come consistently, with others coming in and out as they can make it to meetings. The members come from a variety of colleges on campus ranging from Engineering to Arts and Sciences.

“We welcome chess players of all skill levels,” said David Gloe, president of the Chess Club. “Chess is a game that can be learned in about five minutes, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t know the moves.”

The club tries to participate in events when they can fit them into their schedules. This year, three of the members went to the Eighth Annual Winter Open in Sioux Falls in January. Bruce Brandt from the English department came home with fourth place and some prize money.

In the past, the club has also participated in scrimmages with other players from the University of South Dakota. Looking to the future, the club would like to do more of those scrimmages in addition to hosting some events of their own.

For students, the words “chess club” conjure an image of hopelessly nerdy mathematicians sitting in quiet rooms with looks of cold determination. This image could not be further from the truth. Coming to a meeting of the chess club is more like going over to your friend’s house to hang out.

“Chess is a great game! It lets you take a break from the monotony of classes and studies but still engages your brain,” said Andrew Meyer, a senior computer science student.

The Chess Club meets every Thursday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Pheasant Room in the Student Union. They encourage any student interested in playing a game or two to show up and have fun.

SDSU is currently looking at possible locations and designs for new student residences.

For the last eight years, SDSU’s student enrollment has climbed, stretching the already strained student housing facilities further. SDSU is rapidly approaching 12,000 enrolled students, further pressuring the housing environments.

In 2005, SDSU opened Caldwell Hall to alleviate some of that pressure, but incoming students have already taken up the new space and more. This leaves many undergraduate and incoming students wondering where they are going to live in the coming years.

“As SDSU grows, it is going to have to make sure that our building projects keep up with the demand for housing,” said Matthew Zuhlsdorf, a junior computer science major.

That is just what SDSU is planning to do. The current plan is that around 2010, one or two new residence halls will be under construction. Two plans exist right now; the first is to have a single new residence hall. There is also a second plan to construct two buildings; one to house undergraduate students, with the other geared more toward graduate students.

As a part of this process, the Students’ Association will hold a survey from April 14 to 18 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Main Street in the Student Union. The survey will cover questions such as what amenities students want to see in a new housing facility, what type of space (living, storage, sleeping) is most valuable to students and if the possibility of some type of shop in the building would be desired.

“When I was in the dorms, I would have really liked to see a convenience store or something. It would have been nice to have those things available,” said Christina Cronin, a junior biology major.

Other students commented that they wanted to see more space for living and storing things. Also, many students enjoyed the setup of Caldwell in that the female and male rooms were intermixed, resulting in a more social atmosphere, and having laundry rooms on more floors.

This expansion is part of SDSU’s five-year plan for Residential Life. Funding for projects like this one come from grants from the Board of Regents that are rotated among the state universities from year to year based on the number of students attending the school and the importance of the project. As SDSU is the largest regental university in the state and is growing faster than any other school in South Dakota, funding for projects as essential to the operation of the university as student housing is less of a hassle to obtain. However, it is still a major concern in the planning process. The funds are procured through fees charged to students throughout the regental universities, so when a large project is started, most students don’t even notice the slight increase in their university fees.

A new crude oil pipeline plans to travel through South Dakota. Will the benefits of the project be overshadowed by its risks?

The pipeline will be a part of a 2,148-mile project named Keystone being planned by TransCanada, a North American energy company based in Calgary, Alberta. It is aimed at transporting crude oil from Canadian fields to refineries in the United States at a rate of 435,000 barrels per day by late 2009. Its planned route will take the pipeline across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Patoka, Ill., and Cushing, Okla.

However, it has some landowners wondering how they will benefit from having a crude oil pipeline running under their land.

“What we need to do is stop relying on non-renewable energy sources,” said Ashley Wells, a freshman psychology major. “Until we can move away from that, the pitfalls will always outweigh the benefits in the long run.”

A number of factors have been called into question with respect to the route currently planned for the pipeline. One of the most serious of these concerns is the James Aquifer system. The pipeline will run through an area of the aquifer that is very shallow, increasing the risks of water table contamination in the event of a leak from the pipeline. In most other locations along the route, the water table is protected from surface runoff by a layer of material that does not allow oil to easily pass. A spill even in areas protected by this layer of material would cause harm to the local environment, particularly because nearly the entire route travels through farmland.

“The question is, why isn’t this tar sand crude oil being refined in Canada and the jobs it will create, retained there and refined fuel shipped by pipe?” testified Curt Hohn in front of the Public Utilities Commission in late 2007. Hohn is the General Manager of WEB Water Development Association, Inc., and has particular interest in the project as it travels through the area to which his company provides water for the state. “The answer is, because tar sands is the bottom of the oil barrel and contains chemicals, toxins and elements that once removed from the crude oil are difficult to handle and dispose of.”

Despite the risks, a number of South Dakota politicians have supported the project because of the possible economic gain through taxation and possible opportunities for a future oil refinery along the route. According to TransCanada, they will pay $6.4 million in annual taxes on the pipeline the first year it is built as well as sales and excise tax from the construction.

For the PUC’s part, they are constrained by federal statutes covering interstate projects such as the Keystone Project. John J. Smith, counsel for the PUC, explained in a phone interview that the PUC’s authority only reaches as far as making sure TransCanada meets the requirements set down by the state statutes governing such projects. The only power they have is to try and set fair conditions for the project. Any other terms and agreements are largely between the landowners and TransCanada itself.

This is where many involved parties see the problem. Unconfirmed reports have been cited in various PUC testimonies of TransCanada representatives pushing landowners forcefully towards signing agreements. One report states that from the first communication, TransCanada has mentioned the possibility of condemning the land in question through eminent domain.